Sumoo!

Zack was gone over Thanksgiving Weekend, so I went to see Sumoo wrestling in Fukuoka. It was one of those things that I figured I should do if I had the chance since we are, after all, in Japan. I learned that there are exactly six Sumoo tournaments held each year, each one lasting 15 days. The trip I took was on day 15 of the only tournament held in Fukuoka each year, so it was a good time to go, apparently.

The trip turned out to be not only entertaining, but also informative, at least to some extent. While I did not learn exactly why everything is done in the tournament the way it is, I did learn a little bit about the many traditions that make Sumoo what it is. For example, the roof you see over the wrestlers here is representative of the roof of a shrine where sumoo would have originally taken place.

The wrestlers you see there are one of the professional teams at this tournament. I learned that there are five classes of sumoo wrestlers, and they wrestle during tournaments starting with the lowest class (the amateurs) and going up to the highest. There are always two teams: east and west. I have no idea how the teams are determined. What I do know is that every wrestler on the east team will wrestle everyone on the west over the course of a fifteen day tournament. Wins and losses are then totalled and the guy with the most wins gets a super big trophy (and a lot of money).

I also learned that there are no weight restrictions in sumoo. Everyone wrestles everyone else regardless of size. We saw a few cases where a (relatively) little guy was pitted against a much bigger guy. The neat thing was, the bigger guy did not always win.

See, every wrestling match starts out with two guys facing off like the ones above. The guy in the kimono is the judge. There are two ways to win, though: either you can push your opponent out of the circle you see on the floor in the picture above, or you can cause your opponent to touch the ground with any part of their body other than their feet. The nifty rule summary we got said that anything from a pinky finger to a top knot touching the ground will cause a wrestler to lose. When the wrestlers try to knock each other out of the ring, and they're fairly well matched, the result looks something like this:

When someone is knocked over, it usually happens too fast for pictures. The above picture is of the best match we saw. The guy on the left is Russian, by the way. The two pushed each other and tried to throw each other off balance for a solid three minutes (if it had gone four, it would have been declared a tie and there would have been a rematch). It was really captivating to watch. (The Russian finally knocked the other guy out of the circle.) I was amazed at how flexible these guys are despite the fact that they are enormous.

So most matches don't last very long, usually just a few seconds, may be a minute, but they are really very exciting. And after the last match, the people in the expensive seats throw the cushions they've been siting on:

Then the trophies are awarded. We didn't stay for the whole trophy ceremony, but the wrestling itself was very exciting. I'm told it's much better in real life than on TV (like most things), and I can understand why people would follow it now. I hope I get a chance to bring Zack along next year...