Sumo

For the last week or so, I’ve been watching Sumo wrestling on TV (it’s on before the baseball game starts). The basic rules seem simple – the two *large* combatants dressed only in hair grease and fancy g-strings get into the ring to stare and grunt at each other. At some unseen signal from the fantastically garbed referee (you think black and white stripes look funny!), they start trying to heave each other out of the ring. The first one out loses. Arguably, I’m missing some of the finer details, but that’s the gist.

Today I finally got motivated enough to try to get educated. It turns out that Sumo started as a more free form “beat the stuffing out of the other guy to please the gods” activity that was codified to something like today’s rules about 300 years ago. It’s still considered a Shinto ceremony, so a lot of the costumes and bowing and slapping and stomping is in the nature of pleasing the gods and scaring away the evil spirits.

The rules are simple. The two opponents have up to 4 minutes to stare each other down, and then however long it takes for either something other than the bottom of a foot to touch the mat, or any body part touch the ground outside the ring boundary. No punching, hair-pulling, eye-gouging, choking, or kicking of sensitive areas is allowed (no wedgies either), but everything else is legal. Interestingly enough, there are no weight classifications. And the unwritten rule is that a wrestler should never show emotion of any kind, even when a man twice his size is sitting on him.

The lifestyle is unbelievable. The wrestlers apprentice as teenagers and spend the next 5-10 years fetching and carrying for their elders while learning the ropes (and incidentally graduating from school – this is considered a gentleman’s sport and gentlemen need an education). Then, as long as they continue winning more than half their tournament matches, they are pampered and feted (much like our show horses).

There are 6 grand tournaments a year, lasting 15 days each. A wrestler will participate in up to 15 matches (one a day). The tournament winner is the one with the best win/loss record at the end. A wrestler only attains the highest level title if he wins consistently and is “a man of character worthy to hold such an exalted position.” Only 62 men have managed this feat in the last 3 centuries.

Sumo wrestling is considered the only truly native Japanese sport. The national association's website also claims it’s just as popular as baseball, but given which one gets prime time TV coverage, I think we know the truth. It is, however, a lot more fun to watch. If nothing else, the large white man with a very hairy chest and back trying to suppress all facial expression while dressed in nothing but a baby blue g-string is easily a match for yellow condom man (the Japanese wrestlers look odd, but this man just looks silly).