It was the end of July, the weather was as ridiculously hot as ever and I was near Nagoya. So what? The thing is, every July, since the Japanese like to suffer and love to say “Atsui!!” all the time, there is a sumō tournament held in Nagoya. I, as pure gaijin weirdo, of course had to check it out. What could be more thrilling than two giant sweating bodies bumping blobbingly into each other in a small circle enclosed by masses of weird otaku cheering them to bump even harder? That’s what sumō looks like to those undevoted anyway. But regardless of what many may think, sumō is without a shred of doubt very specific, unique and traditional sport, not to mention its spreading popularity among foreign participants as well. To make long story short, I’ll save the yet another “Sidetrip to Nagoya Part XY” for some later post and I'll write only about sumō today.
First and short, what is sumō? Sumō is a close contact wrestling sport with two wrestlers called rikishi (力士) fighting in a small ring, dohyō (土俵). The basic rules are described below.
Even today, rikishi are to live in a kind of sumō stables, heya (部屋, literally "The Room"), and are confined to strict rules of sumō life, which dictate them even their daily program, diet etc. I'll refrain from long explanations, since I don't really know much about it myself and if you are interested, just see Wikipedia.
You can get a lot of different types of tickets for sumō. The only difference is, as usual, only the placement of your seat. The sumō arena consists of relatively small wrestling ring in the center and virtually everything else are seats for the audience. You have to buy tickets for most types beforehand via internet, telephone or personally; and believe me – they go sold out really fast. The most expensive tickets cost unbelievable 45200円 ($450 / 9000 Kč)!! (x_x). You may get a seat almost under the wrestling ring and have a shower under the sweat of the wrestlers themselves, but hey, 45000円!? You gotta be kidding. But these seats are somehow among the first to sell out or so I heard…
On the other hand, the cheapest tickets are for "only" 2800円 and are ideal for those strange types as myself who’d only like to check out what the hell is all the fuss about. The disadvantage №1 is relatively distant placement of those seats… But you can still enjoy it without any problems and if you care to bring small binoculars, you’ll have it all close and clean like on TV. The more notable disadvantage №2 is the fact, that these tickets cannot be bought beforehand and therefore are “reserved” for citizens of Nagoya and nearby cities and if you don’t buy them quite early in the morning, you’ll be screwed. Since they’ll be sold out for the day and the more expensive, reservable, ones will be sold out even longer before.
I successfully managed to get my hands on the ticket before 10 AM and since I had nothing to do until late afternoon (there were matches whole the day from 8 AM until 6 PM, but the early ones were of low-rank rikishi and I didn't want to spend there whole day anyway), I decided to explore Nagoya once again… But I’ll write about it later.
The tournament day itself doesn’t have any surprising rules. Rikishi fight each other and there is logically only one winner and one loser in each fight. Speaking very briefly, rikishi wins when the opponent touches either the outside of the fighting ring or a part of his body, except his feet, touches the inner ring. It sounds simple, but you just try to at least move this living colossus when he makes a face like he will break your on his knee, tear you apart, eat you not caring to remove bones and all of this inside the ring so he won’t lose. Ladies first… Ahem.
Usually, one match lasts for a few minutes. But – the actual fight… Well, it’s over in some 5 ~ 10 seconds most the time. How is this possible? You may be forgetting that rikishi are Japanese (or they should have been… But the highest rank – yokozuna – is occupied by Mongolian wrestler… And who had been there before him? Another Mongolian wrestler… And American even before) and as such, they must held LOOOooooonnnnng rituals in every match. And this usualy occupies them for several minutes. Purifying the ring with salt, demonstrating strenght, stretching… Then the fight starts, rikishi make few faster-than-Superman moves and that’s it. One of them is always out…or down. This pattern lasts for whole tournament and in the very end, the mighty yokozuna appears. And another ritual starts. On my tournament day, it lasted for some 10 minutes. But to compensate the waiting, the fight itself was longer than usual too… 36 seconds!! Wow, that was LONG! I managed to eat my dinner during such a long fight.
And that’s all. To tell the truth, it’s quite hard to describe actual matches, not to speak about atmosphere, so of course I’ve made fun of it a bit. But the overall image is not far from mentioned – just see for yourself in the videos below. I must admit the atmosphere there can really get quite intense and exciting even for those who know absolutely nothing about sumō and just want to go there because it’s “cool” or are simply wondering how do the famous sumō really look like. For me, sumō was a must-see experience and even though it may not be fun for everyone, I don’t regret going there and I recommend it for everyone – just go to watch real sumō once and see for yourself if you like it or not. Honestly speaking, I'm in the later group, I probably wouldn't want to go there again. But it doesn't mean I didn't like it. At least once, it’s an event no one should miss if they have this rare chance to see it. Sumō is a unique and mysterious-looking world of its own with rich customs and inexpressible atmosphere which, unfortunately, even the Japanese are starting to forget.
Photos:
In front of the stadium and ticket vendor
Nobori flags alongside the road - you can always see them during the sumō tournament
Exhibition
The stadium is larger than you may have thought
Cleaning... I guess?
I believe names of the participants are written on these boards
Ceremony before the fight
"Touch my butt and you're dead!" No kidding...
Fall...
Right before the fight
...right during the fight...
...right before the end of fight...
These banners represent how much money the winner will earn. Or so I was told.
The end
In front of the stadium. All the people are waiting for rikishi to pass by. There are waving at them even if they are in their cars.
Sayōnara, sumō tournament!
Videos:
Sumō wrestler thrown out of the ring
Rikishi performing ritual ceremony before the fight
One of the last matches in sumō tournament in Nagoya in 2008. The colourful sheets held by walking men represent how much money would the rikishi (wrestler) win if he actually won (at least I was told so, correct me if I'm wrong ^^ ).
The last match of the second to last day of the sumō tournament in Nagoya in 2008. Current yokozuna Hakuhō Shō (白鵬 翔; Mongolia) fights versus ex-yokozuna Asashōryū Akinori (朝青龍 明徳; Mongolia)
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