Kazuo Katsuramoto

There's something almost mythic about coming out of Mashike in Hokkaido and making it all the way to Chuo University, the 1956 Olympics, and then onto both a baseball diamond and a wrestling mat. The Showa-era athlete archetype was genuinely different — you did whatever the body could handle and nobody thought it was unusual. Today we'd call it cross-training and write think-pieces about it; back then it was just Tuesday. I think his stubbornness comes through in a career that covered two completely different athletic disciplines. An Asian Games gold, a world bronze and an Olympic fifth place in wrestling, then a pro baseball contract, are enough to make you respect the guy.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Kazuo Katsuramoto is a Japanese athlete born on September 5, 1934, in Mashike, Hokkaido. He was active as both a baseball player and an amateur wrestler, a dual sporting career that was not uncommon among Japanese athletes of his era. He attended Chuo University, indicating a level of academic achievement alongside his athletic pursuits. He won the 79 kg freestyle title at the 1954 Asian Games, finished third at that year's World Championships, shared fifth place at the 1956 Summer Olympics, and joined the Kokutetsu Swallows baseball club in 1957.

Name (English)

Kazuo Katsuramoto

Name (Japanese)

桂本和夫

Reading

かつらもと かずお

Born

September 5, 1934

Origin

Mashike, Hokkaido, Japan

Height

173cm

Occupation

Baseball Player / Amateur Wrestler

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Virgo / Dog

University

Chuo University

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%A1%82%E6%9C%AC%E5%92%8C%E5%A4%AB
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11536788

Tags

• From Hokkaido
• Baseball Player
• Amateur Wrestler

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.