Woodblock kawaraban broadside of Japanese Sumo wrestlers delivering bales of rice to American sailors manning the longboats. The bales of rice were gifts for the Shogun to the US President. The Sumo wrestlers are lifting the bales effortlessly while the Americans can hardly do the task.

This is a very early Japanese propaganda print attempting to portray Japan as strong and America as weak, even though Perry had come to force Japan to open for trade and commerce. Perry even commented that the Sumo were “brute animals” and “overfed monsters.”

Scholar Peter Kornicki commented, “It’s entitled Rikishi chikarakurabe (Comparing strengths of strong men) and I think the point is to show how much stronger the sumo wrestlers were than Perry’s crewmen!”

Scholar Kevin Kelly noted, “Maybe loading, because they are carrying traditional rice containers (koku). The one sumo dude on the left is carrying 2 koku or 300 kg. (661 lb.) of rice, which must have been designed to impress the nuisance foreigners.”