I got a wee bit behind in my jungyo site posts and suddenly we’re already back in Tokyo. Aoyama Gakuin University, informally called AoGaku, is in a fantastic location. If you’ve never been to Tokyo, Aoyama is in the Shibuya area, not far from Omotesando. Aoyama and Omotesando seem to have a more posh reputation than Shibuya, itself, and neighboring Harajuku. The university is found out the opposite side of Shibuya station from most of the famous stuff. Walk along Aoyama-dori about half way to an entrance for Omotesando station.
The university, itself, has ties to the sumo world. Last year, an event was put on here with the help of proud parents of current and former AoGaku students, Isegahama Oyakata, Takanohana Oyakata, and Harumafuji. It is known as a school for the children of celebrities. Private Universities like AoGaku and Keio have grade schools, as well. So many kids who go to the private grade schools go straight into the Universities when they graduate.
Omotesando is a shopping district not far away, but far enough from much of the hustle and bustle of Shibuya. Omotesando Hills is probably having its 10th anniversary about now? It’s a nice mall there that used to feature a wine bar with a wall full of what are essentially wine vending machines. It’s been a long time, though, so it may not be there anymore but I will need to do some research next time I’m back. As with all of these posts, it’s my goal to update and repost them with more information (especially pictures if I get a chance to go).
Gifu is the site of the first leg of the this summer tour as it snakes its way from Nagoya back to Tokyo, then up to Hokkaido. Do train/bus miles accumulate award points like airline miles? I found this great tweet of them setting up the dohyo in preparation. It’s a pristine thing of beauty, isn’t it? Kinda makes me want to have one in my living room…my wife would make me put it in the back yard but it would get rained on. This week makes me think it would get washed away.
Of particular interest to this post is the fact that all three Yokozuna are scheduled to appear. The post comes from the account of the local Gifu-ken newspaper. Local newspapers seem to be frequent sponsors of honbasho, so it makes sense that they’d put in on the tours, too. According to the Jungyo presser, tickets are sold out. Apparently, they were only on sale until the 20th…which is a little weird…but, whatever. Some were being sold through a newspaper but their website also says their tickets are sold out.
That makes me think that I’ll need to plan any Jungyo visit well in advance next time I’m in Japan. None of my, “no schedule,” “flying-by-seat-of-pants” -style vacations. Bummer. The moral: plan, plan, plan, and I need to start researching October’s Jungyo schedule if it’s going to be of any help to any of you traveling. I’d rather the “fun, fun, fun,” method…till my T-Bird got taken away.
Gifu is home to Shirakawago, which is a very unique, historic village. It was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. These peculiar roofs on the buildings are made from straw and tied together with rope instead of using nails. That’s a two hour drive, though, from the Jungyo site in Oogaki city.
A bit closer in, along the Nagaragawa river, is this kind of night fishing with fire. They use cormorants (birds) to catch the fish (called ayu). The birds catch the fish, the fisherman reels back in his birds, and…well…a delicacy is born. Gifu city has a very historic downtown along the Nagaragawa River and the scenery is dominated by the mountains and forests. Oogaki-city itself has a castle, like Nagoya.
Many of the readers may already be experiencing the basho withdrawal jitters. Why is there nothing happening in the sumo world in June? Where is my sumo fix?
In order to help you prepare yourself in advance and ask your favorite shrink for the appropriate medications, I hereby introduce you to the Grand Sumo Calendar.
This is the third and final part of our chat with journalist and sumo pundit John Gunning. Click here to read part 1 and click here to read part 2 to get caught up on our conversation if you haven’t yet! Many thanks to the Inside Sport Japan founder and NHK World and Japan Times man on taking the time to chat with us and answer many reader questions. While I wish we could have asked all of our reader questions, John was very gracious and giving with his time and volunteered the opportunity to do it again.
That being said, we weren’t going to miss the opportunity to talk about someone who’s become a bit of a curiosity to Tachiai readers (and the Tachiai team itself!), so let’s start with a question about our favourite hapless rikishi…
Tachiai: On a completely different end of the spectrum, have you heard of Hattorizakura?
JG: Yeah, yeah. Of course.
Tachiai: We’re huge fans of his enthusiasm, and the fact that he continues to have a go despite his incredible losing streak. Has there ever been anyone like that in sumo before that continues to not put up wins but just get up there on the dohyo and keep going?
JG: There have been lots of guys over the years. Do you remember Sugishita?
Tachiai: Nope.
JG: He lasted 2 years in sumo and didn’t win a single fight. He got one win by fusen-sho. And he retired soon afterwards. He was something like 0 and 40. [nb: fantastic memory – including the fusen win, he was 1-41]. People were thinking he was just doing it as a piss-take. You never know. But you have guys that go their whole 20 year careers and never get past lower Sandanme.
You get all types of people. It depends on their own motivation to be a rikishi as well. Some guys you know from day 1, if somebody comes into sumo like Baraki who’s in Kitazakura’s place –
Tachiai: Shikihide-beya. Same as Hattorizakura.
JG: He’s about 161… 163 centimetres tall, right? What’s he going to do? There’s no way… no way in hell he’s ever going to get to the top division, or even become a sekitori, it’s just an impossibility. He’s too small. So… why is he even interested?
You’ve got guys who love the sport, guys that just love the lifestyle of it, guys who may be doing it for some other reason. Maybe their grandfather or grandmother loves sumo. Maybe they just don’t have anything else to do. A lot of the kids who join sumo at 15, if they’re leaving school at junior high school level, they’re not going to go on and get their doctorate in mathematics. So, for somebody who doesn’t really have any desire to continue education, what are they going to do? They might go and work in construction or farming or something like that, and sumo is a better option for them. So they give it a go, and when they retire they can go do that other thing anyway.
I know guys like that and I ask them that question – why do you stick with it? They just love sumo, they love being a rikishi. They might not be a sekitori, but it’s still special. They’re still part of a very unique group of people. Even if you’re not a Yokozuna and you’re just in Jonidan, you’ve got the mage, so that’s something you can say. You’re on the banzuke which has been published for a few hundred years, it’s a special thing!
Tachiai: Yeah, of course. Here’s more of a cultural question from AG. He says: “Mr. Gunning, we have all seen the tensions between the ‘sumo for Japanese rikishi only’ crowd, and those who accept or even celebrate the infusion of international talent. As Japan changes demographically, how do you expect that to change?”
JG: Sumo for Japanese only rikishi crowd? In the Sumo Association or online?
Tachiai: I think he means in the fan community. Let’s say that.
JG: If it’s in the fan community, it doesn’t really affect anything. In the Sumo Association there’s no “sumo for Japanese only” feeling – it’s one of the most open to foreigner-organisations in all of Japan. I think this may be a misconception among some foreign fans, that there’s some inbuilt dislike or distrust of foreigners. Look at all of the Mongolians who have become Yokozuna.
There is the one foreigner per stable rule, but that wasn’t introduced along racial lines. It was introduced because you would have ten Hawaiian guys in the same stable, they weren’t learning Japanese, and were just hanging out. That was about protecting the culture of stables.
Tachiai: So that people would culturally assimilate?
JG: Sumo’s remit is to protect sumo, not to give way to different thoughts and ideas. So with having one foreigner per stable as a rule, it’s to ensure anyone who comes does assimilate because they don’t have a little clique where they can just live in their own culture. There are still Mongolians that do hang out together, but if you come to join sumo there are no concessions made. You become a rikishi, the same as anyone else. There are people who are racist in every walk of life, but there’s no “sumo for Japanese only” crowd or thinking like that in the Sumo Association. If people think that, then they just don’t understand the world of sumo.
Tachiai: Yamanashi is a Tachiai reader who wants to know if you are able to identify any innovators in sumo – an oyakata, or someone with new training ideas – or someone who has invested in logistics, management, publicity, et cetera.
JG: Hmm! There are some stables and some rikishi who do stuff in addition to the traditional sumo training. But go back to the question of “what is sumo?” Ozumo is not a sport, it’s a lifestyle. This is also a thing that people have trouble getting their heads around.
If you say, “rikishi should pull out for a year and heal up and be ready to come back,” then you’re putting a priority on tournament results over the lifestyle and doing the training of sumo. A truer sense of sumo is being a rikishi and doing sumo every day. The tournaments are part of what being a rikishi is, but the daily lifestyle of a rikishi is also part of what sumo is. Training is not a means to an end in sumo, training is what sumo is. So, you can’t just modernise that, because then you’re changing what sumo is.
You get guys who will still do stuff outside of that in addition. Like we were saying, the young guys like Mitakeumi or Takakeisho will add on extra stuff, either gym work or even working in a pool like we showed with Hokutofuji (on the NHK World Sumo preview before Hatsu). But that tends to be a much smaller part. That’s more about just improving yourself physically. You have to live the sumo lifestyle. That’s what sumo is.
You’re not going to get huge changes, but there are variations: every stable’s keiko is different. What they do is different because they’re all schools of thought, from master to student. You’ll see a variety of different types of things, but they all fall inside sumo tradition.
Shikihide makes sure all of his guys go to high school and graduate. They do yoga after training is finished. There are other oyakata who try to give a more rounded education. Like any sport, you have different coaches with different approaches, and some guys have a much more open mindset to new ideas. In some places, nothing has changed since 1750! But I wouldn’t call them innovators as such, because still everyone has to stick to what sumo is. There’s no skipping keiko and, for example, only doing resistance-band training. There’s nothing like that. Each stable still has the core of sumo training.
Tachiai: So, kind of along those lines, let’s go back to the post that you wrote in The Japan Times about the Jungyo and injuries. We’ll finish with a reader question from Bakanofuji, who says:
“Clearly you believe, and most of us fans agree, that there needs to be a series of changes in the Sumo Association geared towards injury prevention and allowing for full rehabilitation of injured wrestlers. Are there any groups within the Kyokai that are working towards making it happen? One would assume that the Rikishi Association would push for this, but it doesn’t seem like that’s in the works, potentially because some of those people will soon be oyakata themselves. Who else is there that can advocate for the rank and file wrestlers?”
There are probably about 3 or 4 questions in there for you!
JG: Clearly? Really? (laughs) I don’t know if I said that I clearly believe that or not!
I understand the questions, but again that’s making some jumps and assumptions. First of all, the rikishi association is nothing. It’s informal, they don’t have any power, they get together but don’t do anything. There isn’t a monolithic Sumo Association. The Sumo Association is a very loose group of competing interests and ideas. As I said, doing sumo training is sumo. There isn’t the push to change that, because that would change what sumo is and nobody wants that.
I’ve said lots of rikishi hate the jungyo because it’s badly organised, and it doesn’t really help the rikishi. But the problem with that is, again, going back to the sumo association’s remit, they have to popularise sumo in Japan. And a traditional way to do that is to visit the regions and local areas. Nowadays, I think it’s not required as much, because people have more access to sumo through the internet. People have a connection to sumo that they didn’t have before. People can also travel more and have more disposable income, so they see sumo live or online or in a lot of ways they couldn’t before. So sumo may not need jungyo as much as it did before, but still it’s where a lot of rikishi first encounter sumo. Like I said, I saw sumo on TV but when I first went to a tournament that’s what really kicked my sumo interest into high gear.
Tachiai: Same for me.
JG: Same for you, and also for a lot of people in Japan. Most people in Japan have no contact with sumo in a physical sense, so the first time they see a rikishi even if it’s only at a jungyo event, that can spark somebody into wanting to become a rikishi.
Obviously there’s a financial element to it as well: they get a lot of money from these places. So jungyo generates a lot of money, and it’s broadening their appeal and popularity in Japan which is key to them. There’s a competing tension to that: it may not be good for the rikishi in a physical sense. But again, the Sumo Association is run by older people who had a much harder time when they were young, so they feel that “young guys these days are soft and should toughen up!” (laughs). There’s that mentality too!
So, I don’t think there’s any big push to change it. Rikishi moan and complain about it, and it doesn’t help, but it’s not that bad either. You can pace yourself on jungyo if you want. I might have overemphasised the rikishi complaining a little bit.
It’s a contact sport! People are going to get injured regardless, whether they’re at home or not. You can’t avoid it. I never broke a bone in my life until I did sumo, and then I shattered my arm top-to-bottom in 3 places, I fractured my skull, I broke teeth. I didn’t do keiko once without ending up injured. You’re smashing into people on a hard surface, with no protection: that’s going to injure you. It’s almost inevitable! That’s the nature of it, and the nature of sumo is essentially being able to fight through those injuries. That’s the mental thing, you know?
Tachiai: Thanks again for taking the time to chat with us.
JG: No problem!
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Are you ready for Jungyo? The winter jungyo begins tomorrow, 12/3. For the Aki Tour, Herouth provided a great map which you can reference under the features menu. I’ve replicated her map for the winter tour. This 1500-mile journey will cover 10 locations over the next two weeks. The first 8 events will be a 660-mile course of one-day stops in eight different venues on the island of Kyushu. The last two stops will be on two islands in Okinawa with each of those events lasting two days. As the final event will wrap up on December 17, this will give rikishi almost a full month to prepare for the Hatsu Basho starting 1/14.
Two Week Winter Tour
Of particular interest in these events will be the attendance of sekitori. We already know that we are down one yokozuna with the retirement of Harumafuji. I hope he gets to sleep in late tomorrow and enjoys a late afternoon tee-time at a picturesque golf course while the other sekitori prepare to haul their luggage around Kyushu.
Two other yokozuna, Kisenosato and Kakuryu have nagging injuries to worry about. Their health is a priority for the Sumo Kyokai and they are expected to come back to sumo at full force, or join Harumafuji on the links. That leaves us with Hakuho as, likely, the sole yokozuna participating.
Kisenosato and Takayasu had a bit of a homecoming today as the Fall Jungyo made a stop in their home prefecture of Ibaraki. Ibaraki is to the north-east of Tokyo and lies along the Pacific Ocean, south of Fukushima. The Fukuroda Falls are located in the Northern Ibaraki town of Daigo. The capital city is Mito. For those who like natto, Mito natto is supposedly “the bomb”. There’s a mountain called Tsukuba-san and one of the major cities is Tsukuba, home of the well-known University of Tsukuba.
There are two big lakes in Ibaraki called Kasumigaura and Kitaura. Ura means lake and you will recognize it from one famous shikona — no, not Ura (宇良). Ishiura’s “ura” (石浦) means “lake”.
The site of the Jungyo event was in Chikusei city. Chikusei City was created by the merger of several smaller towns with the city of Shimodate. The area is famous for its agriculture and produce, particularly watermelons, pears and strawberries. Chikusei’s website features a mascot (Chikkun) whose body is a watermelon and he has a pear and strawberry in his hat. For example, Tochiotome strawberries come from Ibaraki, as well as neighboring Tochigi and Aichi.
The more I read about Chikusei, the more I want to go. Unfortunately, the website is not really optimized for English. There’s a Google Translate dropdown menu at the top of the page. Look for the kanji for “translate” (翻訳). Hover over it and you’ll see many language options. So, basically you need to recognize the kanji before you can see the translation in your language.
On a tip from Nicolaah, I checked out Kyokara’s Instagram where he shared a map of their trip. お疲れ様です。I hope they’re able to spend tomorrow enjoying the sights and food. Ibaraki is on my list for places to go next time I am in Japan! It’s not far from Tokyo and there are JR Line trains that go out there. I don’t think it will be a little day trip, though.
Found in the depths of YouTube, some kindly fan shot a rather excellent butsukari session during the jungyo sumo PR tour last week. It appears to show Yokozuna Hakuho in an extended butsukari session with rising star Onosho.
Onosho has turned in back to back 10-5 records in his first two tournaments in Makuuchi, and it’s clear he is a young man driven to succeed. If you have the patience to watch the whole thing, Hakuho is really working him to exhaustion (the point of butsukari). At the end, its awesome to see Onosho rally and really push with renewed vigor.
Note as Onosho reaches exhaustion and wants to give up, Hakuho first taunts him, then gets the crowd to cheer him on.
For those not used to sumo training, this interaction may seem odd or even somewhat like hazing, which it is not. I also note that Hakuho really seeks out the hard-charging young rikishi who are working to make the best of their sumo career, and works them hard.
Word from the summer jugyo that Yokozuna Kisenosato resumed some sumo keiko (training) during the tour’s stop in Aomori Prefecture. The Yokozuna was seen engaging in butsukari with former sekitori Takagenji, which would indicate that Kisenosato now feels strong and healthy enough to resume practice.
Of course this sparked a great deal of discussion in the sumo fan world, with many fans taking exception with a declaration that “Kisenosato’s Recovery Is Complete” drawing great skepticism. An article from Yahoo Japan points out, the chances that all of his various injuries are repaired enough for him to compete are a long shot. The article even quotes someone from a Tokyo hospital that frequently treats sumotori, who cautions that Kisenosato has been urged by the YDC to not participate in Aki, and to ensure that his health is excellent and his damage to his chest and foot are completely healed before he resumes competition.
As for myself, I suspect Kisenosato joined the jungyo to re-assure the fans, and to test out his recovery and readiness for Aki prior to making some manner of go/no-go call within 2 weeks. While the entire sumo world wants to see Kisenosato back on the dohyo, we are all looking for him to return strong, powerful and ready to challenge Hakuho for dominance in the ring.
Shamelessly stolen from a twitter post, because I could not find it on YouTube. Some highlights of the kinds of things going on during the summer jungyo, including shokkiri (aka you can’t do that in sumo), Kisenosato toting a baby to the dohyo for his dohyo-iri, and Goeido taking a practice match from Harumafuji. Oh yeah, and Onosho!
The sumotori are still out on their PR tour of central, and soon, northern Japan. The summer tour is important as it brings sumo to the fans, and has done a great job of boosting the appeal of sumo across Japan.
With the Aki basho kicking off on September 10th (count down in the sidebar on the right), there are only a few stops left on the summer tour. This includes
Today – August 14th: Off
August 15th – 20th: Aomori & Hokkaido
August 21st – 22nd: Break & return to Tokyo
August 23rd – 24th: Tokyo, Odaiba mini tournament
August 24th & 25th: Kanagawa & Saitama
August 27th – KITTE exhibition in Tokyo / Banzuke Day
The KITTE exhibition is held in a the JP tower in Marunouchi, Tokyo. Just a note – some really fantastic Okonomiyaki is available nearby. It also happens on the day that the banzuke is published for the upcoming Aki basho.
Never fear sumo fans, the next basho is only 4 weeks away!
Reports from the summer sumo PR tour in central Japan are that Yokozuna Hakuho has withdrawn. Complaining for persistant and increasing pain in his left knee, Hakuho has returned to Tokyo to rest prior to the Aki basho in just one month.
Fans have greatly enjoyed seeing “The Boss” back in fighting form for the past two tournaments, but as we have cautioned, he is one injury away from having to struggle to make it through a basho. Like any combat sport, the mechanical injuries sustained by the athletes never really go away, you can only get them so that you can continue to compete. In the case of this injury, the Yokozuna declared that this had been troubling him since before Nagoya.
This leaves only an injured Harumafuji and an injured Kisenosato remaining with the tour. Fans might infer from this that the roster for Aki could in fact be rather light at the top ranks if none of sumo’s grand champions are fit to fight.
It is reported (via Yahoo Japan) that on Thursday, August 10th, Yokozuna Kisenosato will join the summer jungyo, as the sumo PR tour makes a stop in his home ground in Ibaraki, where he is a local hero.
Readers will recall that it is the opinion of the Tachiai team that Kisenosato should have already undergone reconstructive surgery to repair damage to his left pectoral muscle in March. But clearly the first Japanese born Yokozuna in a generation wants no part of that, and instead will work with what he has and do his best.
His stable master is cited as saying that Kisenosato has limited training opportunities in Tokyo more or less alone when most of the sekitori are out on the PR tour. Therefore, in order to train and condition for the upcoming Aki basho in 4 weeks, he must go out on tour.
While I am sure sumo fans worldwide will be thrilled to see Kisenosato back in action, we all recognize that he is still hurt, and likely has no path to recovery short of a protracted medical intervention. We all wish him the best of luck and the greatest possible health.
In spite of Harumafuji’s consideration of elbow surgery, he has decided he is going to “tough it out” and as of Tuesday, and join the sumer Jungyo. While it’s great to see Harumafuji back in action, and have him drawing fans to sumo’s summer PR road show, it’s very sad to know that without medical treatment, he will continue to operate at ever decreasing performance levels.
There is also talk that we will see Yokozuna Kisenosato join the tour this week, as well. Good luck to all of the sumotori who are gamberizing this August.
久しぶり。Hisashiburi is an extremely useful Japanese phrase. If you haven’t seen someone in a long time or it has been a while since you last did some task and you’re a bit rusty, “hisashiburi.” In the first situation, it means “long time no see.” In others, “It’s been a long time.” My way of apologizing for not having posted a sumo headline in quite some time is to drop some quality culture on you, here, in the form of Rakim. I actually hum this song to myself every time I use the word, hisashiburi. “It’s been a long time…”
大相撲夏巡業草津場所
From our previous Japanese headlines, you should be able to pick up the gist rather quickly. If we start with the last half of the headline after the break, we see that the article covers the Kusatsu Basho leg of the summer tour (natsu jungyo).
大観衆
This phrase is simple enough. Taken all at once as Dai kanshu, or big crowds. Kanshu is also often translated as audience.
有名力士に熱狂
This phrase can be broken into three parts. You should quickly recognize the sumo term rikishi (力士). Preceding that is the word for “famous” (yūmei – 有名). Last is the word nekkyo, 熱狂, which means enthusiasm.
The large crowd of 3,200 people greated their favorite sumo wrestlers with great enthusiasm. It had been thirty-three years since the sumo jungyo stopped in Kusatsu, in 1984. And the last time the tour stopped in Gunma prefecture was back in 2010. Kusatsu is famous for its hot springs.
I really wanted to bring this article to your attention because it used many different numbers. It states the Western years, Japanese “Showa” years and the audience attendance figures. So it is very important to know how to read numbers in Japanese, and that’s something that I haven’t covered until now. Below you will find an abbreviated chart to help decypher these numbers. So the year 1984, as in the article, is 一九八四. You’ll notice that they don’t insert the character for thousand, 千, for years. But when we look at the attendance figure of 3200, they do (and the character for hundred, 百).
It was clear that in the course of the Nagoya basho, that fan favorite Ura damaged his right knee competing against some of the top men of sumo. Up until Nagoya, Ura had remained largely unhurt during his sumo career, and it allowed him to compete with a level of energy and agility that few had seen before.
In an article published in Yahoo Japan, Ura is now out with the crew on tour, bringing sumo closer to the fans. His injury is significant enough that his jungyo participation is limited, and he does take keiko or scrimmage with the other rikishi. In the article, he admits that he was likely not yet ready to fight the Ozeki and Yokozuna corps, and as a result is now trying to heal damage to his right knee’s lateral ligaments (that hold the knee together). He still intends to enter competition at Aki in September.
Commentary: Clearly the NSK has a problem, with it’s star sumotori being frequently injured, and more of them taking injury each basho. When fan favorites don’t show up for events, fans lose interest, sponsors lose interest and the NSK fails to achieve revenue goals. So nobody gets a chance to heal up, and everyone just suffers a bit more each time. As a result, sumo as a whole degrades and competition declines. Someone needs to fix this.
