Kami-Robo exhibition report - London April 2006

In April I visited the Kami-Robo Exhibition in London at the Institution of Contemporary Arts [ICA.org.uk]. When I first saw these robots I instantly thought about Transformers. Then When I looked closely I thought of Vinyl Art toys. However they do have a similarity to both of those but with a big difference. Kami-Robo is an amazing collection of wrestling robots made out of paper by Tomohiro Yasui. He started creating the robots in 1977 and has been making them ever since. It makes you wonder how he keeps on coming up with new designs and believe me when I say they are all unique. The detail in each robot is astonishing even after they have been played with. Being played with is what actually makes these toys even more amazing, I mean thats what toys are made for. Yasui now has a collection of 200 Kami Robo wrestlers each with their own name and wrestling debut date.

You may be wondering what I mean by wrestling robots. Yasui created them specifically to wrestle each other. However this was his own hobby or toy and did not share it with any one else. He created wrestling groups or clans for each wrestler much like the in modern wrestling. Below you can see a picture of a 15-20 foot high wall showing what clan the wrestler belongs to and how they are all connected.

One day Yasui decided to show the world (well first Japan!) how he plays and makes the paper robots wrestle. In a video shown at the exhibition he enters a real life size wrestling ring with a small box filled with some of his wrestling Kami-Robo robots and sat by a mini wrestling ring. He was instantly met with giggles as it did look pretty strange. However he then started to wrestle with his Kami-Robo paper robots and the crowd were actually amazed by the fluidity of the robots. Yasui actually manages to make the paper robots move like they were real life wrestlers. After that Yasui became well recognized and has been doing exhibitions ever since.

Below is a small collection of my favorite Kami-Robo robots. You can view all the picks here.

Two of the original robots from 1982. The red robot is Madroneck King, the Supreme ruler of the Kami-Robo World. In white is Madroneck Fighter, the founder of the Kami-Robo Pro Wrestling Industry.