Table Of ContentTheJapanTimes
By Mark Schilling
Illustrated by Lynn Matsuoka
A FAN’S GUIDE
The Japan Times
First edition, May 1994
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1994 by Mark Schilling and illustrations by Lynn Matsuoka
Cover design by Keiichiro Uekawa
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy,
mimeograph, or any other means,
without permission.
For information, write: The Japan Times, Ltd.,
4-5-4 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108, Japan.
ISBN 4-7890-0725-1
Published in Japan by The Japan Times, Ltd.
Printed in Japan
Table of Contents
Introduction ix
I Watching and Understanding Sumo 7
The Play: A Typical Bout 2
Winning Sumo 6
Kinjite (illegal techniques) 9
Yotsu-zumo 10
Kimarite 12
Dohyo: The Sumo Stage 13
Dohyo Matsuri and Furedaiko 75
The Mizuhikimaku and Tassels 76
II The Players on the Sumo Stage .... 77
The Players (Rikishi from Maezumo to Makunouchi) /8
Recruiting 18
Maezumo 79
Shinjo Shusse 79
Banzuke 21
Jonokuchi and Beyond 22
Sumo School 22
Tsukebito 22
Up the Ladder to Makushita 25
Juryo: The Promised Land 26
Keshomawashi 27
VI
Mawashi (belts) 29
Maegashira and Above: Hitting the Heights 30
Makunouchi Dohyo-iri (ring-entering ceremony) 31
Sanyaku 32
Yokozuna: The Origins 34
Yokozuna: The Rank 34
TheTsuna 39
The Yokozuna Dohyo-iri (ring-entering ceremony) 40
Yokozuna Perks and Privileges 41
The Players Part II: Behind the Scenes 43
Gyoji 43
Yobidashi: The Hardest Working Men in Sumo 47
Shinpan: The Men in Black 49
Off the Dohyo Not So Rugged Individualists 52
Ichimon and Heya 53
Becoming an Oyakata 55
Heya 56
A Day in the Life 59
Keiko (practice sessions) 6 7
A Drug-Free Sumo World 66
The Rest of the Day 66
III Private and Not-So-Private Sumo
Facts. 71
Healthy Sumo 72
Rikishi and the Opposite Sex 76
Fixing Sumo 80
Shikona: Sumo Names 85
Sumo Salaries 89
Live Sumo 94
Hana-zumo 97
Jungyo 99
Keiko (practice) 101
VII
IV A Brief History of Sumo 103
The Beginnings 104
Kanjin-zumo 108
From the Meiji to the Modern Era / / 7
Advanced Sumo Jargon 116
Winning Techniques (Kimarite) 126
Basic Techniques 127
Nagewaza (throwing techniques) 130
Kakewaza (tripping techniques) 134
Soriwaza (bending techniques) 141
Hineriwaza (twisting techniques) 143
Special Techniques 150
Other Techniques 154
Sumo Records 155
Heya Names and Addresses 157
Bibliography 159
About the Author 160
Addresses and Phone Numbers 161
Index 163
To my parents
Introduction
Sumo would seem to be the simplest of sports. When I first saw it,
on a battered TV set in a Kichijoji noodle shop nearly two decades
ago, I didn't need a doctorate in Japanese studies to get the point:
two big men collide in the center of a circle and the first to throw
or push his opponent down or out wins. American football, with
its headbanging guards, was one point of comparison, King-of-
the-Mountain another.
But I also saw that sumo was different, very different. Profession¬
als in other sports don't wear the hairstyles, observe the customs
and in general live the lives of their 18th-century predecessors.
They don't often go mano a mano against opponents twice their
size. They don't usually grow to Orson Wellesian proportions
(neither do many sumo wrestlers, but more on that later).
The more I watched, the more I wanted to know and the more I
learned, the more I realized that this 2,000-year-old sport wasn't
so simple after all.
What were those brightly colored belts that made the wrestlers
look like overstuffed Christmas presents? Who was that little man
with the paddle, scampering about like a terrier at a fight between
two pit bulls? I wouldn't have asked such questions of baseball or
football — I had grown up with them, watched them before I
knew how to talk. And even if I didn't know the infield fly rule, I
would have been embarassed to ask (as an American male, I was
expected to know).
Sumo, however, was different. As I kept asking questions, I
learned that it was a world with its own history, traditions, mores.
Unlike other professional athletes, who live as members of con¬
temporary society and can even disappear into its crowds, rikishi
(which is what the wrestlers call themselves) remain apart, en¬
closed in a feudal microcosm, a remnant of a vanished world.
Their size, topknots, clothes, even the fragant pomade called
bintsuke that they use on their hair, make them stand out wherever
they go. To today's Japanese, rikishi are exotic beings and the
sumo way of life, with its mix of ancient and modern, is fascinat¬
ingly, even forbiddingly strange.
And yet sumo also offered a window into Japan. Since the open¬
ing of their country nearly a century and a half ago, the Japanese
have adopted many Western ways. To newcomers from abroad,
however, those ways can be a barrier to understanding; Japan's
Westernization may not always be only on the surface, but it is
seldom what it seems. Yes, they eat Big Macs and drink Cokes and
wear Levis, just like we do, but as American journalist James
Fallows once observed, they are still far from becoming us. The
sumo world, which makes no pretenses of Westernization (unless
a Walkman over a topknot is Westernization), offers outsiders a
clearer view of certain only-in-Japan realities.
This book, however, is less an anthropological or sociological
essay than an attempt to answer the questions that fans, beginners
and old-timers alike, really ask and that I thought might be interest¬
ing to answer. What do the pre-bout rituals mean? What are the
