Sumo for beginners

JIMMIHANADA

 

The wrestlers are coming, the

wrestlers are coming!
They'll be here in a couple of
weeks, all forty of Japan's top

 

wrestlers, referees, managers, trainers,
salt boys, Sumo Association officials
and the Japanese press will be here to
put on a two-day exhibition at the
Coliseum at the start of June. It is a
big deal, like a state visit, almost. If
you imagine the players of the
Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto
Maple Leafs of the [950s heading

over to Japan to put on a show, you'll

 

get a bit of a perspective on how
important this trip is. They are meet-
ing Premier Glen Clark, they are vis-
iting the Victoria Parliament

iv Foue BA" ho

Buildings and being honoured by a
host of Aboriginal chiefs.

It is only the tenth time in 2000
years that the sport has up and left
Japan.

This is how the sport works:

Each match is a duel between
two men. The fighters can trip,
slap, push, pull, or throw their
opponents either onto the
ground or outside the ring; or
both. One toe outside the straw
tawara (ring) and the match is
over. If any part of the body

the ground, the match is over.
Hair-pulling, eye-gouging and
closed-fist punching are not
allowed. Everything else is.

It is thought that the origins
of the sport come from rural festi-
vals, where the farmers’ would go

head to head. Deeply attached to the -

Shinto religion, sumo acknowledges
many of the religion's rituals: the
wrestlers wear a beaded belt of 13
strings over their wrestling belts.
(mawashi), a significant number in
the Shinto religion, and the stamping

they do before every match is stamp-

ing the demons into the ground. In
the last 100 years or so, sumo has
become a professional sport.

Wrestlers specialize. They are

besides the soles of the feet touch

either fans of yottsu (belt grip)

"sumo, or osu (pushing) sumo. The

former involyes some intricacy, tal-
ent, moves—working the opponent's
belt (mawashi) and his own weight in
conjunction with the forces of gravi-
ty to bring him down—the latter
involves strength—‘“me big, me push
you out.” There are wrestlers who are
a lot more versatile, who have a
whole truckload of manoeuvres at
their disposal, but those are generally
the smaller wrestlers (sumo has no
weight divisions) who need to be ver-
satile to (literally) survive.

The tournaments take place in
January (Tokyo), March (Osaka),
May (Tokyo), July (Nagoya),
September (Tokyo) and November
(Fukuoka). They start on the first or
second Sunday, and last for two
weeks, 15 days. The wrestlers fight
once, only once each day, even if the
match only takes two seconds. The
daily schedules are made up by the
Sumo Association two days previous
to the fighting, so at any given time,
a wrestler knows only the next two
fighters he is to go up against. The
wrestler with the highest record at
the end of the 15 days wins the
tournament. It is a lot harder than it
sounds. ‘

(In between the tournaments, the
rikishi put on a travelling show, many
of the exhibitions taking place in
small towns. These are called
jungyo.)

There is a complication. Every
rikishi belongs to a stable. Unless
there is a tie on the last day of the
tournament, wrestlers of the same

stable never, ever fight each other in