Sumo Smackdown

The giants grunt fiercely. All lights, cameras and eyes are on the pale skinned, belt clad warriors. The smack of flesh on flesh is audible from the farthest seat.The crowd roars as the wrestlers grapple for a hold. The strain is visible as 800 pounds of muscles shove with all their might. Sweat streams off the half naked figures after only a few seconds of exertion as spectators stand and scream encouragement. Fat rolls themselves seem to flex with effort as the blue belted fighter gets a grip on his opponents mawashi. The smaller competitors feet are braced against the edge of the ring. With a final shove with enough force to send an ox airborne the turquoise loin clothed wrestler is defeated. The first match of the Tokyo September Tournament is over and if you blinked you would have missed it.

While in Tokyo we had the enormous pleasure to watch a sumo wrestling tournament. We arrived during the second part of the tournament where intermediate, or Juryo (Second highest division) rikishi (wrestlers) would fight. We took some time to familiarize ourselves with the sport, observing the wrestlers and trying to understand their objective. This is what we discovered...
Two rikishi are called to the ring when the previous bout ends. Both wrestlers come to the center of the ring and squat in the center of the circle formed by strips of what we think were rice fibers and clap their hands once. This has spiritual meaning as they are asking for attention from the gods so they don't have to go into battle alone. They then move their arms around to prove they are unarmed. They retreat to their corners of the ring and drink a sip of water  to clear their bodies and return to the center and stomp the clay floor to squash bad spirits before going back to their corners to grab hand fulls of salt. The salt is then thrown into the air which symbolizes purification. They then squat and by some unknown signal ram into each other and the fight begins. The whole religious build up to the actual fight can range anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes. There is often a lot of intimidation put into play during this routine and rikishi often stand up at the last minute to further stall the match and scare their opponent. The bout can be over in one second, or if it is a particularly well matched set of competitors, more like 10 seconds. The goal is to get your adversary to either touch the ground with something other than the bottoms of his feet or step out of the ring. As you can see in the picture above, four black robed judges sit at the North, South, East and West sides of the ring and they decide who is victories. It is a bit of a dangerous position to be in though, on more than one occasion a three hundred pound warrior was pitched into the audience. Ouch!
Later the champions or Yokozuna (Top 42 rikishi of the sport) all entered the ring. They marched one by one onto the raised platform as their names were announced. It was quite a display.

Then the real bouts began. Most of the champion wrestlers were Japanese but there was one man from Bulgaria and another from Russia.
It was an amazing cultural experience to witness and it was incredible to see such feats of strength.