One of the benefits of my career in publishing is that I was paid to visit to interesting places and meet interesting people, some of whom became long-term friends. About 30 years ago I first visited to Kinokuniya, one of Japan’s two largest booksellers (the other was Maruzen). My objective was to see if we could break the rules of imported bookselling, which marked up the price of foreign books to make them very expensive. (I was about to publish The Dictionary of Art, 34 volumes, 1996). The goal was that we the publisher should determine the Japanese price, rather than the bookseller. We set the price at ¥1,000,000 (£5,000 at current exchange rates, rather more in 1996). Kinokuniya assigned one of their most capable managers, Utagawa Nobuo, to work with me on this project (and later on sales of the online version of The Dictionary of Art). Nobuo became a friend and we meet on our visits to Tokyo.
If you are wondering what this preamble has to do with sumo wrestling, well Nobuo and his wife Sayuki are sumo fans (more importantly, knowledgeable fans), and they were fortunate enough to get four tickets in the lottery for seats (high up in the last row but three) at Kokugikan (the sumo stadium) on 15 May. Most of what follows was told to me by Nobuo (with apologies for any errors of interpretation or memory).
We met at Ryogoku Station (where we saw two wrestlers waiting for a train to take them home), and from there to Kokugikan where we found expectant fans and tourists waiting to catch a glimpse of their favourite fighter as they walked to their day’s work. To our left was a Mongolian (sic) former grand champion holding a bouquet of flowers given to him by a fan (he remains popular). Sayuki was very excited to see her favourite fighter, Ura, walk by.
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| A sumo wrestler walks to work. |
Before we get to the action of the day, let’s go back to the beginning. In some (but not all) areas of Japan sumo remains particularly popular and is taught in school. Rather like football scouts in the UK visiting children’s weekend football games to find precocious talent, the heads of the heya, where sumo wrestlers live and train, visit schools seeking potential champions. The younger wrestlers fight in the most junior tournaments and work as assistants for the more senior fighters, serving them their food, assisting them on tournament days and so on. For example, one senior fighter we saw has such bad eyesight, that his assistant waits outside the ring with his glasses. And before a fighter sits ringside waiting for his bout, his assistant brings his personal cushion (complete with sponsor’s name/logo).
Fighters live in a heya (literally big room) managed by a retired wrestler and his wife. Wrestlers train at 5am every day for two hours. They then eat an enormous breakfast (paid for by sponsors) and sleep. To our surprise, although some wrestlers were, as we expected, fat (some enormously so), a minority of those we saw were strongly muscular rather than fat: compared to their large colleagues they seemed very diminutive (David and Goliath came to mind). Nobuo explained that these fighters rely on technique. The wrestlers grow their hair long and tie it in a top knot. Nobuo pointed out that a few fighters’ hair was not yet long enough to make a top knot: a sign that these were younger fighters. The names of the fighters are not their own – they acquire professional noms de lutte.
Fights take place on a raised platform in the centre of which is a white circle, covered in sand with two white lines in the centre, behind which fighters stand before the fight begins. Between bouts, the platform is swept, and occasionally the sand is sprinkled with water. One fighter stands to the East, the other to the West. The umpire, on the North side, is resplendent in colourful silk robes, a black hat, white socks, and holds a gunbai (a war fan) in his right hand. Before each fight he strikes a dramatic pose, his legs far apart, his gunbai firmly held in front of him. The umpires are changed quite frequently, each sporting his own colour/design of robe. Before the fight another official (much less grandly dressed) stands in the ring holding in front of him a white fan to announce the next fighters. His diction resembles a chant and Nobuo told me that he understood very little of. what was said. Above the ring a Japanese style roof is suspended. Immediately around the platform sit four wrestlers awaiting the next two bouts, and five additional umpires. These additional umpires are able to challenge the decision of the umpire in the ring, which is then checked by video (sumo VAR!). This happens infrequently. There is some peril for the umpires in their ringside seating: on two occasions a losing fat fighter landed on an umpire. Most fights last a very short time, but if a bout goes on for too long, the umpire calls a time out, the fighters rest, and then resume in precisely the position they were in when a break was called (the umpire must remember this very precisely). This is rare and did not happen the day we were present.
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| A general vire of the Kokugikan. |
The seating close to the ring is very expensive and controlled by what Nobuo called syndicates: important and moneyed people. The closest are the ringside seats, followed by the box seats: this is a misnomer: a “box seat” is a square area furnished with four cushions (think sore bottoms and cramp). The rest of the seating is theatre-style and to our minds much more comfortable. On the day we visited, first fights began at 09:20, but these were of lowly ranked wrestlers; very few spectators would have watched them. Around 14:35 The Intermediate Division (Juryo) bouts began and at about 16:05 the Makuuchi (Senior Division) fights. A tournament lasts for 15 days; each fighter fights just once each day. After a day’s bouts, the umpires meet to decide who will fight whom the next day. Thus, an inordinate amount of time is spent training, eating, gaining weight, attending to injuries (a number of fighters had parts of their arms or legs strapped because of previous injuries) compared to the infinitesimal duration of the fights.
Each fight is preceded by a series of ritual procedures common to both the Juryo and Makuuchi, but lengthier in the case of the latter. First, the fighters face one another in the ring behind their respective white lines, watched by the umpire. This involves much squatting and lifting of the legs. One Makuuchi fighter we saw is well-known for the height to which he can lift his legs despite his girth, indicating the considerable strength of his legs. The fighters then retire to their corners where they are offed water to cleanse their mouths and a large flannel to wipe off sweat. Before returning to the ring, they sprinkle a handful of salt on it to make it once again sacred. This is repeated a prescribed number of times (more for Makuuchi fights) and then the fight begins.
In the case of a Makuuchi bout, while the ring is being swept and after the next bout has been announced, a number of men appear to carrying banners that bear the names of sponsoring companies and parade around the ring. These sponsors had paid ¥60,000 (£300) per banner. The number of sponsors varied from two to 20 for the final fight that featured the current grand champion. All sponsorship money goes to the winner of the bout: at the end of the bout the referee hands him a thick bundle of banknotes. Originally, this was the entire amount, but today the umpire gives the winner a symbolic amount, the rest being paid by bank transfer.
According to Nobuo, in addition to the sponsorship money, the best fighters can earn ¥3,000,000 (£15,000 per month) in salary. I expressed surprise that the earnings are not larger, but Nobuo considered that these are substantial earnings.
In addition to the ritual actions that precede each bout, the Makuuchi bouts we saw were preceded by a ceremonial entrance of the Yokozuna (“horizontal rope”) or grand champion, who wears round his waist an insignia of white rope, accompanied by two other wrestlers, one of whom carries a long bow. There followed a procession of the Makuuchi fighters, each wearing a heavy (costly) apron bearing the name of their sponsor. Then an official holding sheets of paper with green characters announced the opponents in the forthcoming bouts. Once the Makuuchi bouts were concluded, the tournament was concluded by the Yokozuna, who performed a sort of dance with the long bow, which he twirled around.
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| The Makuuchi fighters assembled round the ring before their fights started. |
The bouts we saw varied in length from a few seconds to perhaps a minute or slightly more. A fighter can win by forcing his opponent out of the ring (usually pushing, but in one bout a fighter threw his opponent out – quite a feat given his size); by forcing him to the ground or to his hands and knees. There seem to be few prohibited actions. Punching is not allowed, nor is seizing the hair. Unfair play is punished with a reprimand from the umpire but not expulsion. One fighter attempted to attack his opponent early. The umpire stopped the fight and ordered a restart. In some fights there was much vigorous slapping, especially in the case of a smaller fighter trying to prevent his larger opponent seizing him and using his weight advantage. One wrestler used the slapping approach successfully for a time, until the larger man seized the small fighter by his midriff and carried him out of the ring. Another smaller fighter used surprise: his larger opponent rushed him, the smaller man stepped to one side and, as the larger rushed past, shoved him out of the ring.
Although we had learned before we entered the Kokugikan that a past Yokozuna was Mongolian, I was surprised to discover that, of the 42 Makuuchi fighters we saw, two are Mongolian, one Chinese, one Russian and two Ukrainian (so far, the umpires have avoided a Ukrainian fighting the Russian).
What to make of an afternoon at the Kokugikan? First of all, there is the spectacle, the umpires in their finery, the (admittedly very repetitive) rituals before the fight, the parade of fighters in their aprons, and so on. From what Sayuki told us of her favourite, Ura, fans clearly get to know and develop affection/enthusiasm for a particular fighter. This was evident in the latter stages of the Makuuchi bouts, when applause and shouts of the fighters’ names preceded the fights. By this time the highest seats were occupied by large numbers of excitable schoolchildren in uniform. Some of those behind us were vocal enthusiasts for Endo (they were disappointed). Regular fans study the rankings, and follow the ups and downs of the fighters. And they know their foibles: Nobuo told us that one particularly large (perhaps the most enormous we saw) fighter has a physique that gives him a theoretically considerable advantage, but he lacks the self-belief to achieve his potential – sure enough, he lost.
As for Sayuki’s favourite, sad to report that Ura lost despite being cheered on by our little group.
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