These posts make more sense when read in order.
Please click here for the first article in this series.
You’ll notice that I don’t call the contenders “wrestlers”, preferring the Japanese term “rikishi”, which is a professional in Grand Sumo. That’s because they aren’t really wrestlers, even though to Western eyes that’s what it looks like they are, and they’re often referred to as such in English. Wrestling is a tradition that dates at least as far back as ancient Greece. It is a form of grappling where one tries to pin down the opponent. That has progressed to be incorporated into today’s fighting sports, to include cage fighting and beyond to professional wrestling and lucha libre. This form of wrestling is much more intimate than sumo.
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| 江戸村のとくぞう. |
Sumo is not like any form of wrestling. While there is
considerable contact, it is mostly with the arms and hands for pushing,
gripping, and throwing, along with leaning against the opponent’s upper body.
In addition, they sometimes use their legs for tripping.
Other forms of wresting are much more intimate with high amounts of contact. They also tend to be much more aggressive and spiteful. Some bad-mouth their opponents, as in cage fighting and the overly dramatic professional wrestling.
There’s nothing even close to this in sumo.
Sumo is considered to be a martial art somewhat similar to judo, jujitsu, and aikido, but it’s much, much older, dating back to at least a.d. 642. Before that there are indications it was originally a dance that was a form of prayer for a good harvest. This evolved into a religious exhibition of strength performed at festivals. In the 1600s began to become more like a sport. But it’s not a sport for those who participate in it—it’s their lifestyle. Westerners usually see it as a sport, but that’s only a small part of what it actually is.
For a while it was used in military training for samurai, so I like to think of the participants as warriors, although calling them athletes is more accurate. They are not wrestlers. Neither are they fighters in the usual sense. Sumo isn’t really a fighting sport. There’s no hitting, punching, or kicking. Their version of fighting is different from that of other sports.
In fighting sports, spectators often want to see fighters hurt their opponents and seeing someone get knocked out is considered the ultimate win. In sumo it’s the opposite. They usually do their best not to hurt each other. They try to win, but rarely at someone else’s expense. It’s not so much about beating an opponent. It’s about doing one’s personal best. Here the spectators don’t want to see the rikishi get injured and are happy when they find an apparently injured rikishi is okay.
Still, sumo does involve fighting, in a restricted sense. They fight hard and there are a lot of serious injuries—more than in most sports. They clash at fast speeds, often smashing their heads together. They fall or are thrown, landing heavily on their shoulders elbows, fingers, hips, or knees. They land on their backs along the edge of the platform, and they are often ejected off the platform, sometimes several rows into the audience, hitting the concrete floor. And they land on top of each other. There’s a lot of weight flying around. It is a very dangerous sport and I really wish they would make it safer.
The first thing people notice is their size. Many of the
rikishi are more than six feet tall and they are bulky. These guys are very large, but it’s not just the biggest rikishi who wins. While bulk helps with
pushing and holding one’s ground, it can sometimes be a hindrance and very
often it’s the smaller guy who wins.
Sumo doesn’t have any weight classes because that doesn’t really matter. Small rikishi often take down large opponents, although a large size does have its advantages. Injuries are common and that helps to level the playing field. These guys often fall hard and occasionally fly off the platform and onto the audience.
Take a look at the following 2020 exhibition tournament demonstration of what the 218-pound (99 kg) Enho could do with the great yokozuna (grand champion) 348-pound (158 kg) Hakuho, his stablemate and teacher. While it's not a serious match, it's still fun to watch.
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| Takanoyama in 2012. FourTildes. |
When the thin, but agile, 223-pound (101 kg) Czech rikishi Takanoyama went up against 408-pound (185 kg) Tenkaiho, Tenkaiho grabbed Takanoyama and marched him backwards to the straw bales, yet Takanoyama still achieved a stunning win. You can see that here.
I won't describe the next ones to you. You need to see them yourself. The judges saw a problem with the first match, so they had to do it over with a very different result.
Five-foot, nine-inch (174 cm) Midorifuji gets both hands in under his towering opponent’s shoulders while pushing back, then he pulls him forward to get him off balance. As he moves to the side, he lets go with one hand, using it to grab the opponent’s arm, and pulls him further forward, then places his other hand on the opponent’s back to push him to the clay, all in just a few seconds.
Abi’s not small, but one interesting technique I’ve seen him use is during his initial charge he pushes up on his opponent’s jaw forcing the head back, which knocks his opponent off balance, then he steps to the side out of the way and his opponent lowers his upper body forward, and still off balance with nothing to grab onto, falls into the empty space, as Abi watches him go down, assisting him with a slight push.[i]
Onosato did this to Abi in the same tournament.
Abi is also able to do this when on the defensive. As his opponent pushes him backwards to the edge of the ring, he makes a space between them, and as he hops along the ring’s edge, he reaches up behind his opponent’s head and pulls forward, so the opponent falls into the empty space, with a push from behind.[ii]
Or, when Abi pushes up an opponent’s jaw and gets him off balance, then he can charge forward, pushing the opponent out of the ring.
The largest rikishi was Orora from Russia, who weighed 645 pounds (293 kg), but he lost a lot of matches because his opponents could run around him and tire him out.
While a bulky body matters to pushers and thrusters, thin rikishi win because they are very agile and quick. Short rikishi also have an advantage in that they can get in from below and throw their opponent off balance, sometimes lifting them by their leg to throw them down. The main thing is that they all have to be extremely strong.
These are definitely not fat men wearing diapers. These are highly skilled athletes. They have to be extremely focused and able to respond to rapidly changing situations with split-second decisions. Some say their body responds by instinct and they don’t even remember what they did or what happened during a bout. This is from years of very repetitive practice so that their body knows what to do without thinking about it, much like how a piano player thinks of what the music sounds like and their hands just hit the right keys.
Most bouts are over within seconds, with the longest lasting up to two minutes, so there’s usually little time to think. Bouts run long when there are extended periods of deadlock with the two rikishi leaning against one another waiting until they can get an advantage by being able to grab hold of their opponent’s belt or surprising them with a strong push back or to the side.
They can be confident they’re going to win and completely dominate the match, but still lose at the last second. Such surprise upsets actually happen quite often, and this makes sumo unpredictable.
When I first started watching I found their sparse attire a bit distracting, but I soon began not to notice it much, since I became more focused on that they are doing. Now I just think of it as their uniform. Eventually I realized the benefits of mawashis. The main thing is that they don’t get in the way. They used to wear ceremonial aprons in front, but they kept causing complications so they gradually shortened them, and then got rid of them altogether, replacing them with symbolic cords that are just tucked into the mawashi so that they are able to fall off...and they often do.
Mawashis are not skimpy. They may look that way because these guys are huge, but they weigh about 11 to 16 pounds (5 to 7 kg) and are around 23 to 39 feet (7 to 12 m) in length and are either canvas or silk, depending on the rikishi’s rank.
Part of the fun of watching sumo is to see the techniques and moves that each rikishi uses; how they have to rapidly try different techniques as the circumstances change; and which types of moves triumph over others. The mawashis help make this more visible. The mawashis are also durable and won’t come off in a match, so they are perfect for this sport.
In today’s Japan, rikishi are the only ones who wear the topknot hairstyle, or chonmage. This style was once worn by samurai and is a tradition carried over from the time when sumo was part of samurai training.
Click here for the next article in this series:
A Brief Note on Sumo Techniques
If you'd like further information, I recommend the following:
NHK, Japan's public broadcasting TV channel, streams the half-hour highlights shows here https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/latest/ before they do on other sumo pages of their site. There are up to four one-hour shows that were recorded live usually on Day 1, Day 8, Day 14, and Day15 of each basho (tournament) that are found here https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/sumolive/. They also have information about the rikishi and the excellent short Sumopedia videos. This is your required first stop.
If
you'd rather watch the full day live in Japanese, you'll find it
showing on various YouTube channels, but you'll have to wait until it
starts at around 8:30 a.m. Japan time to search for them. And remember,
they're a day earlier if you're not on the early side of the
International Date Line. The matches run to about 6 p.m., with the top
division starting around 4 p.m.
The Japan Sumo Association's official site https://www.sumo.or.jp/En/ also contains some excellent information.
Since I’m interested in analysis and statistics, I also highly recommend Michael’s Ozeki Analytics blog at https://ozekianalytics.substack.com/. You can skip signing up to check it out. It can be a bit technical for some people.
For first-rate information on the individual rikishi, their abilities, and the techniques they use, you have to check out Tim Bissell’s Sumo Stomp! at https://sumostomp.substack.com/. Again you can hit “No thanks” for signing up in order to read his posts, but then go back and sign up.
Then enjoy! Sumo really is the ultimate sport.
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