Sumo

On Sunday Christine, Erin and I went to Osaka to watch part of a professional sumo tournament. I have so much more respect for sumo than WWF, which I am embarrassed to say I have also seen in person. Sumo is Japan’s national sport, however baseball is much more popular. In the last decade or so, many foreigners have competed in (and won) sumo tournaments and many people attribute this as the reason for sumo’s decrease in popularity. A Mongolian man is the current champion. Sumo is abundant with rules and rituals, and I’m no expert, so I’ll try to explain what I can.

There are six tournaments in Japan every year. Three are held in Tokyo, and the other three are held in Fukuoka, Nagoya, and Osaka. Tournaments last 15 days, and every contender has one bout per day. Because of this, they arrive about an hour before their bout and leave when they are done. Each day begins with bouts between the less experienced/talented wrestlers and continues on up until the late afternoon when the top ranking wrestlers wrestle. We saw lots of sumo wrestlers out on the street walking to and from the Osaka Gymnasium building while we were walking around trying to find the gym. You can tell they are sumo wrestlers because they are the HUGE men walking around wearing a yukata (casual kimono) with sandals and their hair is in the formal sumo knot on top of their head. Sumo wrestlers are not allowed to drive cars, so most of them walk on the street.

The point of sumo wrestling is to throw the opponent within the ring or force the opponent out of the ring. Each bout is usually less than a minute long. There are many techniques in sumo, and even though I don’t know much about sumo, I could see a difference in ability once the top ranked wrestlers got in the ring. This is the sumo arena.


A new platform/dohyo is carefully made out of clay, sand, and rice barrels before every tournament. The roof is suppose to resemble a Shinto shrine.

Before each rank level, all the contenders within that level come out in formal sumo attire ($4000 aprons) and walk onto the platform when their name is announced. They stand out to the crowd and then in at the rest of their team.



The ring is dampened with water between every so many bouts. Special attendants sweep the ring before every match as well as the edge just outside the ring once the wrestlers have entered the ring. There was a referee/gyoji in a samurai style kimono for every bout, but they switched referees often. Apparently the referees are all ranked in some sort of hierarchy.

In order to purify the ring the top ranking wrestlers throw salt into the ring just before entering….. every time they enter. They stretch their legs out in the air and then squat facing their opponent. After that they can (and almost always do) stand up and leave the ring to rinse their mouth or just psych out their opponent. Many of them hit their belly to get the salt off their hands and that was one of my favorite parts. It’s hard to describe why, but I’m sure you can imagine. While they are warming up in a ceremonial/routine way, the sponsors for that particular bout are announced with men carrying sponsor logo banners around the ring. Whoever wins that bout gets the money.


Lots of wrestlers were pushed or fell completely off the platform, and they landed on one of the five judges sometimes. After the bout, both wrestlers face each other and bow. The loser leaves, and referee declares the winner while the winner bows and collects the envelope full of prize money. Once in a while there were some tough calls, so all the judges came up to the platform and conferred. They asked for a rematch once, but all other times they declared a winner. Here they are conferring and I've also included a bout between lower ranked wrestlers. Press play, then pause it and wait for it to fully upload before watching it.



I was surprised by how little noise was made by both the audience and wrestlers. If I were a wrestler, I would grunt or growl once in a while. And if I were in the audience, I would yell and scream before and after bouts. But despite my best efforts, I can never be a professional sumo wrestler because women are banned from entering the ring…. for purity sake of course. I know I was in the audience and could have screamed, but it was very apparent that actual screaming would have been rude and I never want to be that foreigner. There were a couple shouts from individuals but so few compared to audiences of other professional sports. If you look closely at the stands in this picture, you can see the box seats. If you buy box seats you get a square section of floor space, four seat cushions, and tea service. You can’t wear your shoes in the square.


The cheap seats were actual chairs with seat cushions strapped on top, and we were able to keep our shoes on.


The top ranking wrestlers were really impressive. Many of them look like your run of the mill fat guys, but when they wrestled you could see leg muscles you didn’t know existed. Their strength is astonishing. The current grand champion/yokozuna is 26 years old, 184cm/6ft and weighs 148kg/326lbs. Among the 70 top ranking wrestlers, the age range is 20 – 36 years old, the height range is 168cm (5ft6in) – 203cm (6ft7in), and the weigh range is 117kg (258lbs) – 182kg (400lbs). There are no weight classes in sumo though, so a 258lb-er could face the 400lb-er if they are in the same rank class.

More about the ranking and the yokozuna... the ranking is all based on how many bouts or tournaments they've each won overall. In order to become a grand champion/yokozuna (the highest rank), one must already be in the rank just below the grand champion called a champion/ozeki, and win two tournaments (15 bouts) in a row. Once you reach the grand champion/yokozuna level, you can never be demoted. Because of all this, there can be multiple yokozunas at one time or none at all. Yokozunas continue to compete in tournaments until their ability is no longer at the yokozuna level, in which case they voluntarily and respectfully retire to start their own stable to train others.

Anyways, here's the best close up that I got just before a bout started.