The Scent of

BY JIMMIHANADA

 

True story. Rural Japan.

A car pulls up, through the dark-
ness, to the moonlit bamboo thicket
and the barbecue pit. The vehicle seems
to have come from nowhere, and wasn't
expected. Everyone who was to have
come showed up before sunset.

No one emerges from the car,
though people are heard talking inside.
They sound puzzled. The headlights
remain on, and cut through the breeze-
blown smoke from the barbecue.

The doors on the hatchback eventu-
ally, slowly, open and three people get
out. A girl from town that most people
sort of recognize (Hamada?), and two
white gaijin.

The three amble up to the group,
and say hello. They are offered food
and beer—there is a lot to go around
during this celebration of the harvest.
And the spirit is high.

Then, after about half an hour of
eating and pleasantries, there is the
challenge. The white man is ushered
towards an unkempt sandy ring. He is
as big as a wrestler—a statement more
about his conditioning than his feroci-
ty—but seems a little soft. He knows
vaguely what to do, though he does
seem surprised at the forwardness of
the request.

A blue-shirted farmer already squats
on the ground before him, face red
from the sweet potato whiskey—the
shochu—he’s been drinking all night,
wearing what would be called a shit-
eating grin in more hostile circum-
stances. But it’s a smile nonetheless.
The gaijin smiles back. They assume
the position in the sand, like two line-
men in a game of beach football, ready
to launch into the tachi-ai.

  
    
  

<, the farmer reaches out
slaps the foreigner's right
Towards the coarse sand just

; ey both lift off. It’s kind of

ws mano n SaaS

cheeky, but it works. And the gaijin,
much bigger and slower than the
farmer, isn't expecting it. He falls heav-
ily into the dirt.

The farmer tries to stand up to cele-
brate his victory, but can't quite seem
to come out of his squat. His legs feel
weak and leaden, and there is pressure
on the back of his neck, pulling him
down. It feels like his collar is cutting
into him. Looking down, he sees the
white hand pulling rather strongly at
his shirt. The gaijin had anticipated the
trick; he was just too slow and perhaps
too polite to do anything ‘about it. But
the hand insists on pulling the farmer's
shirt, and consequently the farmer,
downward. Face first, into the sand,
just like the gaijin.

They are covered with sand, but are
both wearing shit-eating grins. Now
there is grit between the teeth, though.
They laugh. But without missing a
beat, another shochu-fuelled challenger,
equally red-faced, approaches. The
crowd cheers.

The gaijin turns to the applause. All
faces, even the moon's, seem to be
watching the action.

That was the first, and only, time |
wrestled.

A wrinkle: The barbecue we had been
invited to, the one at which I fought, —
was the wrong barbecue. We had a bad
map, and Hamada had a horrible sense
of direction. After I realized that, I
also realized that the men that I was up
against were making me fight for the
food we ate.

The first time I saw sumo was in
Glasgow, Scotland. On television.

It was after hiking around the
Hebrides with a group of fellow back-
packers, one of whom was a
Glaswegian firefighter. A bunch of us
ended up staying at his house. Perhaps

the

nervous about the next day's destina-
tion—Belfast—I found myself awake
at two in the morning. I turned on the
television, with the sound down so as
not to waken anybody. There on the
screen I found two great men in thong
attacking each other ferociously on a
clay dais set in a darkened auditorium.
It was the highlights from the first
sumo exhibition held on British soil.

The camera shot was static and
slightly distant from the action, and
the British announcers spoke reverenth)
and seriously about the men within th
straw ring. One of the two was eventu
ally thrown to the ground, to subdued
applause, then two more men climbed
up into the ring.

It was the salt that first grabbed my
attention. The wrestlers would bend
down, jam a thick hand into a woven
basket, and pull out a mound of crum
bling salt. Then they cast the salt onto
the ground, or, better yet, threw it int
the air, and as it fell it left a trail as
luminous as that of a light saber.

What's with that, I asked myself.
There's got to be more to this sport.
Suddenly, it wasn’t a strange foreign
novelty or something to get giggly ove
in a superior North American way. It
was something exotic and interesting
that deserved my attention.

Through a bit of luck, perhaps
serendipity, I was living in Japan exact
a year later. Within my first week in
the country I knew when the Fall
Tournament started that first Sunday
in September. At precisely 4:25 in the
afternoon, I turned on NHK and set |
my bilingual television to English and
as if it were a new hyper-addictive
street brand of opium, became
instantly hooked.

Halfway through the afternoon's
action, a young, thin, serene wrestler

a crimson mawashi came up against a