Charlie & Syd with sumo wrestlers, Japan, 1932

Charlie, Syd and Kono pose with the wrestlers

Charlie and Syd watch the match

It was after this sumo match that Charlie was informed of the murder of Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai. The Prime Minister’s son, Ken, had been watching the sumo match with Charlie & Syd. It was revealed later that Chaplin was part of the original assassination plot. The officers hoped that killing Chaplin would start a war between the U.S. and Japan. Thirty years later in his autobiography, Chaplin wrote : “I can imagine the assassins having carried out their plan, then discovering that I was not an American but an Englishman—“Oh, so sorry!”