Rumble in Aichi: Sumo Comes to Town

Marlow and I went to our first sumo tournament in Nagoya, and we had a great time! We ended up with nosebleed seats, but that really didn’t affect our experience, we still really enjoyed it. To fill you in, here is a crash course in sumo: there are nine ranks of sumo wrestlers, the top four being the upper ranks including the highest, yokuzuna. We arrived in time to see the pros as they were introduced and paraded around the ring wearing fancy, bright aprons (I read some of these aprons can cost up to $5,000 as they often feature silk and gold embroidery! $5,000?! Believe it). We also spotted a few foreign wrestlers--they were pretty easy to recognize from our distant seats as they were much hairier than the Japanese wrestlers. Here is a breakdown of interesting sumo facts:

*Sumo, though it has evolved a little, is over 1500 years old, and began as part of a ceremony to the gods to pray for plentiful crops.

*The hairdo of today’s higher ranking wrestlers is consistent with those of early sumo wrestlers, and (according to the official sumo website…I’m not making this up) can also help to protect the wrestler’s head in the event of a fall.

*The title of yokozuna has been around for 300 years, yet only 62 wrestlers have ever coveted the position.

*Unlike American boxing, there are no weight limits or ranking systems, so wrestlers can be faced with opponents much heavier than themselves.

*The gyoji or referees are the guys who look like they are wearing fancy pajamas and running around the wrestlers. Their pajamas are actually a type of kimono, and they too are part of a ranking system: the lower ranking gyogi are barefoot and the higher have cool Teenage Ninja Turtlesqe split toe socks.

*Before the wrestlers actually collide, there is a period of pumping themselves up, glaring at their opponents and throwing salt. This part of the match is called the shiriki, and it allows the wrestlers to build up excitement among spectators, but what’s most interesting is the 4 minute time limit that has been implemented recently. The first time limit was implemented in 1928, and it was 10 minutes! I guess ADD has affected even the most devoted of sumo fans. The actual wrestling time within each match is often less than a minute or two long.

Though the 4 minutes of glaring and salt scattering may sound pretty boring, we actually had a great time and found the matches to be quite exciting (they really make up for the 4 minutes of glaring in the last minute of rumble). And the everything sumo souvenirs are cool too. Only real disappointing part was that the two yokozuna we saw parading around earlier didn’t wrestle, but it was still exciting nonetheless. Here is a video Marlow put together: