Japanese Culture

Winter Jungyo, Week One

Andy Festivals, Japanese Culture, Jungyo (巡業), Travel , , , , ,

While a Taylor Swift tour will hop from massive stadium to massive stadium, these tours go out into the countryside a bit more after the main event has ended. Let’s face it, BTS is not going to be playing the Cat’s Cradle anytime soon. But these tours are focused on fan outreach in local communities. With that in mind, let’s check out the first week of the winter tour, galavanting around the island of Kyushu.

The largest city on the island of Kyushu is Fukuoka, site of the recent tournament. So, rather than pack their akeni for Honshu and bigger venues, our top wrestlers climbed into buses and hit the road for a quick tour of the island to stay close to supporters who could not make it to the sold out basho. The Kyokai has a nice webpage, in English, which describes the general “run of show.” Each event loosely follows a similar format, with practice in the morning followed by entertainment and bouts in the afternoon with the featured wrestlers shifting in each location to focus on hometown heroes. (You can read about my experience at Jungyo this past summer, here.)

While the Japan Sumo Assocation and its wrestlers focus on fans and local outreach, the local communities are often focused on the promoting tourism and festivals or local industries or products. Ever since the tour swung by Ukai during the cormorant fishing festival, I like to dig into these places a bit more. Last year, I discovered the Yatsushiro Myoken festival. There is a lot to see in Japan.

I am taking note of these for my future trips so I hope you all enjoy. Pipe up in the comments if you have been to, or lived in, any of these locations and have recommendations. For those of us who want to learn more about Japan outside of Tokyo and Osaka, these tour itineraries are actually a great place to start your research. Where are they going and why is this location trying to promote itself by hosting a Jungyo stop?

Miyakonojo, Miyazaki

“Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.” As I’ve repeated more times than is really necessary, Kotozakura won a head of cattle when he won the title in Fukuoka. That prize is given at every tournament and is sponsored by the government in Miyazaki to promote local produce, especially its famous wagyu beef. But as I have learned, there is more to Miyazaki than delicious, succulent, tender, marbled beef. (Insert drooling Homer emoji here.)

For the first time in eight years, the tour visited Miyakonojo in Miyazaki. Miyazaki prefecture has a great, English-language, tourism website. On this site, I saw many jaw-droppingly amazing photos, including the stunning Takachiho Gorge toward the center of Kyushu and two sites on the outskirts of Miyakonojo, minutes from the Jungyo venue. Below, are the Nagata Gorge and the Sekinoo Falls.

So, I’m showing these amazing pictures of gorges and rivers and forests to my wife and she’s like, “Oh, I’ve never been there but Miyazaki is kind of known for its beaches. They have, like, mango trees and stuff.” So, here are some more pictures of Aoshima and the Miyazaki Seaside Park.

One item that jumped off the page at me when I saw the Kyokai’s program for the day’s activities was the fact that several of the day’s features, including Terunofuji’s rope tying demonstration, were sponsored by “Kirishima Shuzo.” I was familiar with Kirishima Chanko, not Kirishima liquor. It turns out there is a Kirishima brewery and distillery, complete with a Factory Garden and walking tours, right in the heart of Miyakonojo City.

That brings us to the sumo event, itself. Local Makushita wrestlers Nagamura and Kamitani fought and won their bouts in front of the hometown crowd. Nagamura had won the Sandanme yusho in Osaka earlier this year and fights in Kise-beya. Kamitani also has a Sandanme yusho under his belt and fights in Arashio-beya. Miyazaki also produced recently retired Kotoeko, the new Oguruma oyakata, and he took time to address the crowd and thank them for their support. I should mention that Nobeoka, hometown of Kotoeko and Nagamura, is home to this “Pac-Man Rock” place.

Not every jungyo event has “Question Corner,” but this one did. For Question Corner, three wrestlers climb onto the dohyo in their kesho mawashi and answer questions from the audience. At this tour stop, Sadanoumi, Shodai, and Wakamotoharu were featured. Wakamotoharu was asked which wrestler gives him the biggest challenge, and his reply was, “Shodai.” While the Emo King stood next to him and glared — as intimidating as Masayo can get — Wakamotoharu worked up the strength to express his frustration of losing to Shodai even though his chin is always up and his mass is so high. Powerful, inspiring stuff.

See, Shodai, I told you, “You’re too damn high!” Sure enough, when you look at their head-to-head, Shodai has won their last three bouts for a slim 6-4 advantage in their rivalry.

Nishihara, Kumamoto

On December 3, the tour stopped in the Aso district of Kumamoto Prefecture. Mt. Aso is a nearby volcano, the largest in Japan. We are all very familiar with Kumamon, the black bear mascot. Kumamon crops up on kesho mawashi and is frequently at events with Shodai, Sadanoumi, and other Kumamoto-area wrestlers. But the real draw of Kumamoto is the volcano. Mount Aso certainly features highly in the Kumamoto tourism campaigns. There is also a good amount of information in English, targeting foreign tourists.

Aso City is the hometown of Makushita wrestler Asonoyama, not to be confused with the former Ozeki. He and Fujiseiun were the hometown boys for this tour stop and Asonoyama was granted the privilege of wearing an oicho-mage for the first time as he fought in a Juryo bout against Kagayaki. Fujiseiun fought Nishikifuji. Local kids were also able to participate in the practice portion of the event with Shodai.

Nagasaki, Nagasaki

Hump Day brought us the Nagasaki Basho. So, um…Nagasaki is quite well known, particularly in America, for another sort of Fat Man. And in other news, Nagasaki is known for its long history as a port city by the Portuguese. There are a number of UNESCO World Heritage sites in the area tied to the Christian heritage in the area. Much of the event was brought to fans by Suginaga Kamaboko, headquartered in Nagasaki, timed to coincide with their year-end promotional campaign. If you are not familiar with kamaboko, think of the white and pink fish-cakes in your ramen.

The sumo event was held at Happiness Arena. Thanks to NiB, the local Nagasaki TV station, there is a great video of something we rarely see: the dohyo-matsuri performed for a Jungyo dohyo. This was a much more informal, laid-back affair than what we get before a hon-basho — or even at the heya — but fascinating in its own right. NiB also put together another quick piece covering the event itself, focusing on hometown hero, Hiradoumi.

Question Corner in Nagasaki pulled in fan favorites Hiradoumi, Ura, and Sadanoumi. Hiradoumi also stood in for the oicho-mage demonstration.

Genkai, Saga

Neighboring Saga Prefecture has a great, English-language tourism website, highlighting. Genkai town, with a small population under 5,000 people, does not feature highly on the tourism website but is home to a nuclear power plant. Check the irony at the door, please. Apparently, the tax revenue from hosting the power plant keeps the town pretty well in the black, financially.

Saga features good food and several onsen, as well as beautiful scenery. The real star seems to be the Nanatsugama Cave complex in neighboring Karatsu.

The venue was much more intimate than Nagasaki’s Happiness Arena, with 1650 people coming to the Genkai Gymnasium. Makushita-ranked Chiyotora is from Saga City and pint-sized, 16-year-old viral-video star, Kosei, is from Takeo. Perhaps because of Kosei’s presence, twenty kids from two local day care centers participated in the morning practice with the sekitori.

Omuta, Fukuoka

Omuta is a city in Fukuoka on the border with Kumamoto. The day’s events were sponsored by テレQ, FM FUKUOKA, and the local sports association. Just when you think you found a city to skip over, there’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Miike Coal Mine and its Miyanohara Pit played an integral role in Japan’s industrial development during the Meiji Era. The mine was also the site of a major labor dispute in 1960 (cool NHK video to get a sense of the scale of this lockout). Whenever I see the name, Miike, I always think of Miike Takashi’s “Audition.” Now, I have a much more pleasant association with the name. “Kiri, Kiri, Kiri…“

Beppu, Oita

Beppu is a somewhat regular stop for the Winter Jungyo. The Kyokai has not visited every year, but they do seem to cycle through every two or three years. It’s claim to fame are the hot springs. It is so famous for hot springs that a cuisine called Jigokumushi, or “Hell Steaming” where eggs, seafood, pork buns, and a wide variety of foods are steamed over the mineral-rich waters, gurgling forth from the Earth.

Sadanoumi, Hiradoumi, and Shodai participated in Question Corner. Presumably Shodai’s indimidating presence has moved Wakamotoharu off the bill, replaced with Hiradoumi because of his lightning fast, “anti-Shodai” tachiai.

On To Week Two

Week Two will finish the Kyushu loop of the journey and head back toward central Japan and Osaka. From Osaka, the final leg will be a quick trip out to Okinawa. Meanwhile, many of the non-jungyo wrestlers except for Kitanowaka have headed back to their dohyo. Kitanowaka, on the other hand, has been in London with his shisho. That will be a very interesting tournament.

I have updated the interactive map so that it is in Kita-kyushu, next stop on the Jungyo Trail.

Winter Jungyo 2024 Opens in Miyakonojo

Andy Jungyo (巡業), Travel , ,

The Winter Tour has started in Miyakonojo, Miyazaki prefecture. At the bottom of this post, I have an interactive map that will show the path of this particular tour. One can imagine the London event that Josh wrote about yesterday will be very similar, though not a “Jungyo”.

These tours are a popular method of outreach for the Japan Sumo Association and it is a great way for fans to meet and mingle with their favorite wrestlers. I had the fortune of going to one such event this past summer. So, this picture is not from Miyazaki, but from Tachikawa. But I hope it gives a sense of the atmosphere. If you would like to read about my experience there, I wrote about it here. I encourage you to check out that post for background on Jungyo.

The Kyokai posted the schedule for the first event on Twitter. Takerufuji will be sitting for the oicho-mage demonstration and Terunofuji will have his rope tying demonstration and dohyo-iri, though he will not participate in bouts.

As for this tour, it starts in Miyazaki prefecture and will end in Okinawa. Miyazaki prefecture is a well known agricultural region in Japan. It’s known in particular for high-grade wagyu beef. That beef is celebrated in the Miyazaki Prefectural Government presents the Miyazaki Governor’s Award, which is a trophy in the shape of a cow. The winning wrestler receives the meat from one head of Miyazaki fine cattle, as well as chicken and produce.

This tour will also pass through Oita prefecture, whose Shiitake Cooperative provides the famous trophy filled with mushrooms. It will then go around Kyushu before passing over the Kanmon strait to Shimonoseki and hoofing it over to Hyogo and Osaka before flying down to the sun and sand in tropical Okinawa.

That brings us to the main reason I highlight these tours for foreign fans. They are a great way to get out of Tokyo and to see other areas of the country.

Interactive Tour Schedule

I’ve put an interactive map below with a tour schedule. This version allows the user to page through the Days as the tour progresses. I’ve defaulted to Day 2 so you can see the first leg of the long, circuitous path from Miyazaki to Okinawa. There are arrows on the left side, underneath “Tour Day”. Click on the right arrow to cycle toward Day 15 and the left arrow to go in reverse. Any feedback you have is appreciated.

Shirokuma’s New Kesho Mawashi Highlights Hometown Festival

Andy Japanese Culture ,

Shirokuma will join his stablemate, Onosato, in the top division at the upcoming September tournament in Tokyo. To celebrate, his hometown supporter’s club presented him with a brand new kesho mawashi. Kesho mawashi are the special mawashi with long, decorated aprons that sekitori wear during the introduction ceremonies, or dohyo-iri.

Shirokuma’s hometown is Sukagawa, Fukushima and that town is host to one of Japan’s three great fire festivals, the Taimatsuakashi. The festival has its roots in a battle from the 16th Century. Local residents took up arms to defend the castle and this festival symbolizes their efforts.

In November, teams of local residents build these massive bamboo structures and stuff them with dried brush, then wrap them with mats. A sacred fire from a local shrine is then lit, paraded to the festival site, and then used to set the massive structures alight.

Two years ago, they were able to hold the festival with crowds for the first time since the pandemic. This presentation will hopefully increase awareness of the festival and bring more people to Sukagawa to enjoy it. I will hopefully be able to go in a future trip. If so, plan for me to be there with some marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers.

To see what it’s like, as well as a detailed explanation how the bamboo structures are made, I hope you will enjoy this video. The kesho mawashi artwork does a great job of representing the actual pyres.

I will close with the words of The Great Beavis, “Fire, fire, fire.”

Andy’s Trip to Japan 2024: Part III

Andy Ryogoku ,

In past posts, I have given a bit of background to our trip. In Part I, I talked about why now is a good time to go if you are on the fence or have not been before. In Part II, I briefly mentioned different areas of Tokyo with a focus on the Ryogoku area and why the Koto and Sumida areas are good “home base” areas for sumo fans. In this post, I will finally get down to business and start talking about our trip.

The top item on my list has been meeting with Honda Masataka of Ekoin temple. I was scouring through the Kyokai’s financial reports one weekend, as one does, and I noticed a few small property holdings listed among their assets. In particular was an entry for a tiny speck of Tokyo with the title, “Chikarazuke”. When I looked it up, it was a stone monument, like the Ozeki and Yokozuna stones. Except this monument is right down the street at a little temple called, Ekoin.

The Ryogoku Pilgrimage

Closed Kokugikan

For those sumo fans making their pilgrimage to Ryogoku, the arena at Kokugikan will likely be top of your agenda. It’s Sumo HQ, where all of the Tokyo-based tournaments take place, home to the Sumo Kyokai’s museum and gift shop, Sumo School and the community clinic, and it also hosts many amateur tournaments and non-basho events, like the retirement ceremonies of top wrestlers.

However, it’s not always open.

So, what else is in the area? There are a number of heya, the closest of which is Nakamura-beya which is basically a block over from the McDonalds. Speaking of Maccas, my son and I learned that there actually is a sumo-worthy reason to go to a McDonalds in Japan: macarons. They’re not exactly Pierre Hermes – which you can find in the Mitsukoshi Department Store – but still tasty and much less expensive. 190 yen each! There’s also the Chanko Kirishima and Ami offers up Isegahama-style chanko.

The spot that I would like to highlight and to get onto every fans’ list of Ryogoku sites to visit is the Ekoin Temple. This location is significant because the sumo that we know today evolved from sumo competitions held here at the Temple. As I mentioned above, it is home to the Chikarazuka. This Sumopedia episode from the NHK briefly mentions it and its importance to the history of sumo.

Getting There

Finding it is easy. If you come out of the main gate at JR’s Ryogoku station, Kokugikan is on the right. But most of the restaurants, hotels and business-happenings in Ryogoku are to the left. Cross under the railroad tracks and the road that runs in front of Kokugikan basically dead-ends at the Temple. Given the large buildings around it, though, the Temple entrance might seem a bit “non-descript.”

While I like walking around at night, I came back during the day.

Once you walk through the front gate, there’s a rather lengthy driveway which takes you to the main building. As you approach the building, pay special attention to the monument on your left. That was a gift from the Sumo Kyokai and is referred to as the Chikara-dzuka, or stone/mound of power (力塚). Rikishi go there to pray for strength.

Also on the left, a bit further in are stone memorials, those for individuals (including a Yokozuna or two), as well as larger monuments to past disasters. Historically, when a disaster struck Japan the government would send remains of the victims to be interred here. That practice ended after World War II and the effort to separate church from state. So, there is no memorial marker here for the earthquake this year, the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, the Kobe earthquake, etc.

History and Significance

You see, this temple was established after the great Meireki fire of 1657. Remains were sent here and the temple workers would tally and inter the dead. The total number of dead from that disaster is up to 100,000 people. Afterwards, the site hosted kanshin sumo events. These were very popular and became a regular thing and sumo tournaments were hosted here in temporary structures, built for the tournament. (Doesn’t that sound like the process of re-construction we know and love today?) In 1909, they moved into a fixed structure, “the Old Kokugikan” here.

The temple has many Ukiyo-e prints of the time, like the one on the NHK video. You will notice the popularity of the events. The folks at Ekoin would count the streams of people coming over the adjacent bridge to watch the sumo and gage its popularity, and how much they need to prepare. As you can see from these pictures, the events hosted many people, some people even being hoisted onto their friends’ shoulders to watch the action.

The bridge in the background is the famous Ryogoku bridge. That has been featured in many ukiyo-e artworks of the Edo and Meiji eras. For fans of ukiyo-e, it is worth noting that the Hokusai museum is just down the road and a few streets over is Hokusai-dori. Apparently, he was a product of Sumida-ku. One wonders if he was one of these massive throngs of people. Or if, like so many of us today, he struggled to find tickets to get in!

Just inside the building there is a foyer or genkan with a great dragon emblazoned on the ceiling, very similar to this one, featured on Tokiwayama-beya fabric from a few years ago. You’ll notice what looks like wooden lattice-work on the ceiling. Go stand in the middle of the room, under the dragon’s head, and clap. The echo will intensify and reverberate creating this wild effect where it sounds like many people clapping. Your friends, standing a few feet away will not hear the echos. Only those in the center will hear it.

Beyond this entryway is the room where services are held. There’s a lot of ornate decorations and an amazing statue of buddha and what looks like a framed mizuhikimaku over on the left. When I asked, “This is beautiful, may I take a picture?” Our host replied, “if I don’t know what you’re doing, I won’t know.” He then left the room and returned a few minutes later. (I shyly took one quick photo.)

Mizuhikimaku (水引幕)

I mentioned that the room had what looked like a framed mizuhikimaku. “Mizuhikimaku” are curtains that separate our world from the sacred world. Different colors have different meaning. White or black signify death. Other colors indicate other meanings, like celebration.

You are familiar with a purple one, emblazoned with the crest of the Sumo Kyokai (Association), that hangs above the dohyo during honbasho. There is a similar one for the Sumo Renmei (Federation) and this picture of Ekoin temple. The purple indicates the presence of something pure and sacred inside the curtain.

If you want to see the one for the Sumo Renmei, see below. This is from Kokugikan when they were hosting a middle school championship. The mizuhikimaku for those events is this cool claw-looking symbol for the Renmei. To be honest, it is probably barely discernable in that tiny picture, though. But next time you see a sumo event, check the curtain for which crest is on it. If it’s a sakura, that’s the Kyokai.

As you leave the temple, walk to your right and go behind the building next door with the Seven Eleven. Underneath the dozens of parked bicycles, you will notice a metal circle. That is the location of the old dohyo. When there is new construction in the area, like this apartment building, the construction teams often find remnants of the old venue.

I will sprinkle future posts with more pictures that I took, as well as of the ukiyo-e which were provided to us by the good folks at Ekoin.

Jūshoku

A word about the head of the temple, Honda Masataka. He is a very warm, engaging, knowledgeable guy, and particularly eager to discuss the history of the temple and its relationship to sumo. I encourage everyone to check out the temple. For those of you who speak Japanese there is a bit more outreach available. He is hosting events there open to the public for 500 or 1000-en.

My Japanese language skills are far from proficient so my wife was my translator. I must say she was thrilled to learn more about the history and significance of a place so close to her home. She’d been a bit nervous going to the interview. After we arrived, she was briefly freaked out when the assistant said she would return with “Jūshoku,” but he put her at ease very quickly.

Closing

In sum, I think sumo fans would like to add Ekoin Temple as an attraction on their pilgrimages to Ryogoku. They also have this amazing gallery online. Those of you who are amateur sumo enthusiasts — or even just fat bloggers with shirts that are a size or two too small — may want to pray for strength at the Chikarazuka. Strolling around the grounds is very peaceful and there is a lot of very interesting things to see. There is a decent amount of signage and materials in English. Leave comments if you have any questions.