Sumo

One of the American international students in our Kaikan had found out that there was a Sumo Match in Fukuoka. Many of us wanted to go see it. Sumo is the national sport in Japan, so of course I wanted to see it!

People who read my blog regularly will already know Fukuoka. (Oh yeah, feel the bad conscience coming up? ^^) It is about 2h by train from Oita. It was the very first city that I saw in Japan. It was there that I made contact with the Japanese culture.

The match was on Saturday, but we wanted to go already on Friday in order to go to a club. And after the match we wanted to travel to Nagasaki and come back to Oita on Monday evening. What was really exciting was that so many of us actually went. So when we got on the bus, I immediately had the feeling of going on a second field trip ^^ (People who have read my blog will know about the first one.)

Although it is exciting and fun to be a bunch of people, it was also annoying to coordinate so many people. I felt like half the time in Fukuoka we spent waiting or looking for someone. We ate some great motsu nabe (Fukuoka specialty), which is vegetables, meat, tofu, pasta-like dough, cooked in broth in a big pot in the middle of the table. It was delicious. But unfortunately, it was not much (but expensive!) and I ended up buying some food from the 7-Eleven konbini afterwards. The club was a club.

Motsunabe - delicious and expensive

I wish I could tell some exciting story about Japanese club culture, but it was like being in Germany. It was probably also a foreigners' club. The name was something like "Sam and Davis". And somehow the club reminded me a little bit of the "Fun" in Paderborn. (Paderborn people will know this is not really a good sign ^^). One thing I might have noticed is that the guys and the girls in the club were flirting a little bit more aggressively than I know from Germany. I wonder if it was our group, which attracted much attention, or if it is a normal thing in clubs in Japan.

Probably the most interesting part of my trip was the Sumo Match. I never knew that the sumo wrestlers fulfil so many ritual proceedings before the actual match, which itself only lasts several seconds. So most of the time we spent time watching the sumo wrestlers performing their ceremonial rituals for about 4 minutes before fighting for about 5 seconds. The sumo match had already started at 10 a.m., but we were told to come at 15 p.m. when the main event starts. And after watching big people doing the same rituals over and over again, I can understand why. It is impossible to sit through a sumo match for more than 2h. I even caught myself missing the fights, because their preceding rituals had driven me into daydreaming.

But if you think about it, Sumo has already developed as a sport in Japan already 1,500 years ago! It started out as a religious ritual in order to pray to the Gods for a good harvest. The interesting thing is that all these rituals have survived and make sumo so unique. So it is acutally not only the sport you watch, but also a piece of Japanese history, culture, religious beliefs... Imagine, even Samurai have watched the same as we do now.

The sumo ring is called the dohyo and is made of clay. 

The hard surface is covered with a thin layer of sand. 

You can see a roof hanging from the ceiling. It resembles a shrine and the four tassels in different colors at its corners stand for the four seasons of the year.

 

 I constantly saw people going over the dohyo with brooms, but I did not if they spread the sand evenly or if the sweep it away.

Before the matches start, all the sumo wrestlers come up on "stage" in reverse order of their ranks. You could notice that because when the last wrestlers came up the audience started cheering. 

They wear ceremonial aprons made of silk (I read those are really expensive). 

The sumo wrestlers go through a series of symbolic movements before acutally fighting. They rinse their mouths with water to cleanse body and mind. Then they wipe their bodies with a towel. I actually saw one wrestler wiping his armpits first before wiping his face. And some wrestlers seem to be eager to make a dangerous impression, because they wipe their faces and body pretty aggressively, as if they wanted to rub off their skin and at the same time looking like they wanted to kill somebody.

They then clap their hands together in order to attract the attention of the Gods. Then they raise their arms with the palms upwards to show that they carry no weapons.

The following movement is probably one of the best known in Sumo. The wrestlers lift one leg to the side high in the air and then stamps his foot on the ground, repeating the procedure with the other leg. This symbolically drives evil from the dohyo.

The athlete throws salt into the ring in order to purify it. It is supposed to protect him from injuries. 

 

The athletes then squat facing each other and glare at each other. This is a kind of indirect warfare, part of the intimidation. At this point you would think that they start fighting, right? No, they do not, they go back to their corners and repeat the whole procedures again and again. This can take up to four minutes!

The actual fight only takes several seconds. 

The winner (left) of the match squats again facing the referee. The loser leaves the ring (right).

As you might have noticed the color of the kimono of the referee changes colors, because I took the pictures from several matches. There are also ranks for referees. Only certain ranks can officiate a match with a top rank sumo wrestler. The rank of the referees can be determined by the color of the tassel of his fan. 

You can also see a person in black garments in the middle in front of the ring. Around the four sides of the dohyo sit four judges, who come up in the dohyo when their is doubt about a referee's decision. They can overrule the referee's decision. 

I actually saw them coming up once. It was like watching a scene from Lord of the Rings - four black knights slowly approaching and circling one person from four sides....

And if you liked the match, you can buy some souvenirs ^^

It was fun! Thank you guys!