In November of 1993, I visited Japan for 2 weeks. It was a big adventure; my friend Debbie was living in Nagoya then and the original plan was that we’d take off for a few days together and then I’d be on my own. The plan changed when Debbie had a family emergency, and she left me in the hands of some friends of hers.
I spent a lot of time at first getting used to living in a Japanese apartment, exploring Nagoya via subway, and watching a lot of Japanese TV. Then after a few days of culture shock and visiting temples and viewing autumn leaves with some of Debbie’s friends, I headed off to a couple of the other islands. I had to, because if I hadn’t, I would have spent the entire 2 weeks watching the sumo tournament that was then taking place.
I got into it because although I couldn’t understand what was going on, I could understand victory and defeat, formality and spectacle, juggernaut and underdog. And also, the English-language daily Japan Times explained what had gone on the night before, and I was pretty well hooked on the sport. Also, I had attended a party at someone’s home where sumo was on the TV, and everyone cheered wildly when a hotly favored, huge American champion named Konishiki was
taken down by a much smaller man. The tournament was eventually won by another American, Akebono.
There are a lot of stats and pictures here.
The other day, I was looking at a website that featured caganer, the pooping peasant figurine that people in Catalan love to put in their Nativity scenes, and there was a sumo one.
The crouching stance really lends itself to the, uh, imagery.
I went looking on YouTube for sumo videos, and it seems that unless you want to look at teenage girls hopping around in inflatable suits running into each other, you won’t find real bouts or other authentic sumo events unless you use a specific wrestler’s name in the tag search. Once you find them, there’s all kinds of stuff, but not organized by date or tournament.
That’s when I remembered my little mobile phone photo of the sumo bike accessory – we were in Aspen for the day, looking around, and it caught my eye. I think it’s a horn, or makes some kind of incredibly rude farting-go-very-fast sound.
It must be funny as hell to ride around looking up its backside.
Still, I have a lot of respect for Sumo and may even try to watch the upcoming January tournament, if it comes up on TiVo.