David Benjamin - Sumo: A Thinking Fans Guide to Japans National Sport (Tuttle Classics)

Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.

www.tuttlepublishing.com

Copyright holder 1991 Charles E. Tuttle
Copyright holder 2010 David Benjamin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Benjamin, David, 1949
Sumo : a thinking fan's guide to Japan's national sport / by David Benjamin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-4-8053-1087-8 (pbk.)
1. Sumo. 2. Sumo--Japan. I. Title.
GV1197.B46 2010
796.812'5--dc22

2009030880

ISBN: 978-4-8053-1087-8

Distributed by

North America, Latin America & Europe

Tuttle Publishing
364 Innovation Drive
North Clarendon, VT 05759-9436 U.S.A.
Tel: 1 (802) 773-8930; Fax: 1 (802) 773-6993
info@tuttlepublishing.com
www.tuttlepublishing.com

Japan
Tuttle Publishing
Yaekari Building, 3rd Floor
5-4-12 Osaki, Shinagawa-ku
Tokyo 141 0032
Tel: (81) 3 5437-0171; Fax: (81) 3 5437-0755
www.tuttle.co.jp

Asia Pacific
Berkeley Books Pte. Ltd.
61 Tai Seng Avenue #02-12
Singapore 534167
Tel: (65) 6280-1330; Fax: (65) 6280-6290
inquiries@periplus.com.sg
www.periplus.com

Revised and updated edition

14 13 12 11 10 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Printed in Singapore

TUTTLE PUBLISHING is a registered trademark of Tuttle Publishing, a division of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.

Introduction

Well, its kind of interesting, but theyre so fa-a-at!

Every real fan creates his sport in his own image.

Me, Im a sumo fan. Been that way since 87. Long time. And whats sumo to me?

Well, its ballet and its bullfighting

blundering and grace

dignity and buffoonery.

Its lightning and molasses

suet and gristle.

the monstrous and the minuscule

the loner and the mob.

Its choreography and spontaneity

honor and corruption

the cerebral and the Neanderthal

basketball and judo

football and the balance beam.

Its frogs and princes

clerics and clowns

Brer Rabbit and Brer Bear

dArtagnan and Quasimodo

silk and mud

tits and ass

incense and beer.

Sumo is, minute for minute, split-second for split-second, the quintessential spectator sport. Its sudden and violent, with almost no rules. One guy against the other and the ref (most of the time) is just another pretty pair of pajamas. The only guy wholl ever blow a whistle is the drunk in the 53rd row.

And sumo no question is the best sport there is if youre prone to imagine yourself in there, swinging away because all these guys are out of shape

• because youve got little guys going up against humongous guys and winning!
  
• because fat guys take on guys who look like Schwarzenegger (the movie star, not the Governator), and beat em!
  
• because women pour out of the bleachers to touch you! (So what if theyre all 58 years old? Theyre women!)
  

Sumo is a joy to discover and a fascination to pursue. I came to it as a TV sports fan one of the millions of kotatsu -potatoes who admits I cant begin to play the game as well as those jocks on the screen, but who insist we know it better than the players. Or at least as well as some of them

once in a while.

It is from that point of view that I write this book. There exist, in sumo circles, many others especially gaijin (foreigners) who enjoy the sport from a perspective that, although I often deplore it, is equally fertile. They tend to treat sumo as a mystic cultural treasure of Japan that also offers its cognoscenti an infinite source of in-group gossip.

I remember when I met Doreen Simmons, the reigning queen of gaijin sumo experts in Tokyo. I told her I was writing a sumo book and she fixed on me a suspicious and proprietary squint. What sort of book? She wanted to know.

Well, from the point of view of the sports fan.

Doreen smiled with relief and lowered her deflector shields. Well, she said, I dont care about that.

Sumo is the only sport in the world in which the foremost expert need not know, or care, about what happens when the athletes are actually in action. Imagine a book about the World Cup in which the road to the championship is a mere backdrop for discussions in much finer detail of Ronaldos top ten iTunes, or Ronaldinhos orthodontia.

But in sumo circles, this is the norm. Much of the interest, among foreigners, dwells on a tiny, weird backstage domain, a cloister, the sumo world, in which its participants circulate bedtimes, hairdos, hobbies, medical history, marital aids

I have begun to suspect that this unnatural focus on background rather than competition plays a major role in the odd, grotesque image of sumo outside Japan. To me, before I began to see sumo as a sport, and not such a weird sport at that, it struck me as half Oriental conundrum, half disgusting joke. This tends to be a pretty common perception among gaijin .

But wait! This sense of mild distaste isnt just a gaijin bias. As democratic citizens, the Japanese people are not obligated, as they might have been under Tokugawa or Tojo, to quietly revere sumo as a Shinto sacrament. Long before they reach adulthood, todays sophisticated Japanese apply entirely private and arbitrary (read: normal) criteria to decide whether they really enjoy watching fat men grab each others love handles and do the lambada.

Even in Japan, sumo like pickled plums, noodle-slurping and urinating in public (all popular facets of Japanese culture) is an acquired taste. Among most Japanese, a fondness for sumo grows slowly in the reluctant psyche which explains why the average age of a sumo crowd at the Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo (sumos Madison Square Garden) is nearer fifty years than twenty.