In the year 23 BCE, a Shinto religious ritual emerged in Japan that would evolve over the following 2,000 years into what we know today as Japan’s national sport, sumo wrestling. Originally done as an oracular ritual to pray for bountiful harvests, sumo is often given the credit of being the first ever “sport.” Although it was not standardized into a competitive practice until the early 1600s, it is an undeniable fact that athletic competition as we know it began here. Today, especially in Western culture, we make a caricature of this practice, often depicting sumo wrestlers as overweight, unhealthy behemoths with an IQ akin to that of a box jellyfish and the sport as nothing more than two of these people smacking into each other for the better part of a minute. We see this in TV shows, literature, movies and even children’s cartoons. This stereotype is completely divorced from the current state of sumo today, or the nature of its rikishi, or wrestlers, as they have existed throughout ancient and modern history. One example of this stereotype being untrue is made manifest in the career of the greatest rikishi of the 1980s, Chiyonofuji, who weighed 260 pounds, consistently winning matches against opponents 50 to 100 pounds heavier than him.
The average Western person’s idea of a sumo match is the following: two extremely overweight men in diapers launch themselves at each other until one is pushed out of the circular competition area, or dohyō. While roughly 50 percent of sumo matches are finished with an oshidashi (frontal push-out) or a yorikiri (frontal force-out), both being techniques in which the winning rikishi muscles his opponent backwards out of the dohyō in a straightforward fashion, the strategies employed by both rikishi during the match paint a much more complicated competitive picture than the aforementioned Western cultural misgivings would have one believe. Sumo is a competition of balance and advantage states, and if you give up either of these, you will find yourself lying on the clay or off the dohyō very quickly. In these games that end in oshidashi or yorikiri, the conclusion is often brought about when one rikishi places his competitor in a position that allows him to exploit an imbalance through a myriad of strategies and tactics. One that is commonly used is referred to as a dashinage, where one rikishi gets a firm grip on the other’s mawashi, or belt, and attempts to swing all his body weight in a particular direction, thus knocking his opponent off balance. When one begins to see the thought behind even a simple oshidashi victory, the sport becomes much more than a collision of blubber.
It is also worth noting that the other 50 percent of sumo matches that do not end in a rikishi simply getting pushed out of the ring often finish in a variety of different ways, each of them incredibly varied, complex and entertaining to watch. Tochinoshin, a top-level rikishi from the country of Georgia, was known for finishing many of his matches with the technique called tsuridashi, or lift-out. He would get a solid two-hand grip on an opponent’s mawashi and simply pick them up and walk them out of the ring. Many of the more electric finishes in sumo often happen when one wrestler is backed up to the tawara, or the straw bales that mark the corner of the dohyō. In this situation, many wrestlers attempt a reversal technique, hoping to take advantage of their opponent’s forward momentum to achieve a clutch win. Some popular techniques used in these situations are uwatenage, an overarm throw, and shitatenage, an underarm throw. Ukrainian-born Aonishiki is a top competitor in the current sumo pro scene, having won two of the last three tournaments. He is known for these reversals, and it is always exciting to see him get put on the ropes and come out on top.
Sumo is, in my opinion, one of the most entertaining and diverse sports out there. As a cultural phenomenon alone, it is absolutely fascinating. However, the athletes themselves come in all shapes, sizes and styles, as sumo wrestling does not work in weight classes. In no other sport can the 220 lb Enho take on the greatest sumo wrestler of all time, the 342 lb Hakuho, and achieve a victory. Sumo has a way of telling a story of honor, commitment and humility in glory, and it is certainly more complex than how Western media tends to portray it.
