King Sarbro: A Balancing Act
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2021-05-05T19:02:05-07:00
Yamamota Hostara, known professionally as King Sarbro, was a high-wire performer and aerialist with the Sells Brothers Circus, Adam Forepaugh Circus, and other traveling shows. Hostara was born in Edo, Japan, in 1842 and immigrated to the United States with a traveling group of acrobats in 1872.145
Like Prince Youturkey, Sarbro’s wire act featured a “slide for life,” in which he completed the dangerous feat of sliding from a high-wire all the way down to the ground. Through the circus, he met his wife, (referred to in the census as “Annie Sarbro”) also a performer with the circus. They were married on February 7th, 1873.146 Hostara and his wife, sometimes called “Queen Sarbro,” or “Madamoiselle Sarbro,” had two children together - one child, gender unknkown, who died in infancy, and one daughter.147 Also like Prince Youturkey, King Sarbro’s wife was a white woman, the daughter of Irish immigrants.148Unlike marriages between white men and Japanese women at this time, their marriage did not make Hostara eligible for citizenship.
Sarbro died of “consumption,” or pulmonary tuberculosis, in 1882. Though his circus career was not as long as acrobats such as Albert Uyeno, he was famously beloved by circus-goers around the United States.
