SUMO

Sumo is the national sport of Japan. So, this weekend we went to our first sumo tournament in Tokyo to experience one more piece of Japanese culture. We went to The Sumo Hall (or Ryōgoku Kokugikan) in Ryōgoku, Tokyo to see one of six grand sumo tournaments of the year. Each tournament begins on a Sunday and runs for 15 days, ending also on a Sunday. There are "East" and "West" divisions and the higher ranking grand champions (yokozuna) compete later in the day.

Sumo is an ancient tradition in Japan. Today there are still ceremonial rituals that are related to when the sport was used in the Shinto religion. The roof over the sumo ring resembles that of a Shinto shrine. On mounting the dohyo (wrestling ring), the wrestler faces the audience, claps his hands and then performs the leg-stomping shiko exercise to drive evil spirits from the ring as the referee announces the wrestlers' names once more. Stepping out of the ring into their corners, each wrestler is given a ladleful of water, the chikara-mizu ("power water"), with which he rinses out his mouth and a paper tissue, the chikara-gami ("power paper"), to dry his lips. Then both step back into the ring, squat facing each other, clap their hands, then spread them wide to show they have no weapons. Returning to their corners, they each pick up a handful of salt which they toss onto the ring to purify it.

The two sumo wrestlers (rikishi) reenter the ring and squat facing each other until they silently agree to charge at each other and begin the bout. Each bout usually lasts only a few seconds and there are two main ways to lose a bout. The first person to be pushed out of the ring, or who touches the ground with any body part other than the soles of the feet loses.

We thought Sydney was making great strides towards her sumo career; she already has the "squat" down and wears diapers. But there are no weight divisions in sumo, so an individual wrestler can sometimes face an opponent twice his own weight. Hardly seems fair. In Sydney's case, it'd be more like 15 times her weight!

Enjoy these photos from our sumo experience...