How do you feed 40 sumo wrestlers for a week? As the Royal Albert Hall hosts the Grand Sumo Tournament, looking after the sport’s enormous competitors has been a challenge for the concert venue. “We are providing vast amounts of rice. We have over 700kg of rice ready, 1,000 packets of miso soup and over 1,000 onigiri, as well as 750 packs of instant noodles for the entire tournament,” said Dave Gamble, the Hall’s head of programming. They’ve had to bring in special seats, as normal UK chairs can’t bear the weight of a sumo wrestler and ten tonnes of soil for the dohyo, or fighting ring. “We’ve also had to fly more than 130 people over from Japan, including judges and ring attendants and other people from behind the scenes.” Then there’s also working around the three-hour naps the fighters take each afternoon to slow their metabolism and conserve their strength.
The tournament ran from 15-19 October. It was the first time an official sumo tournament had been held in the UK since 1991. Tickets for all five days sold out instantly and, according to people I spoke to, ranged from about £100 to over £800 to sit cross-legged on a cushion right at the front, in what some termed the “squash zone” (if a sumo wrestler were to fall on you, you’d know about it). The South Kensington hall is the only venue outside Japan to host a five-day tournament of this scale in sumo’s 1,500-year history.
Widely accepted as Japan’s national sport, sumo has deep roots in Shinto, an ancient Japanese belief system that worships the natural world. The first recorded match took place in 23 BC. Since the eighth century, sumo has been practised at the imperial court in Kyoto as a way of praying to the gods for a good harvest. After the 12th century, sumo became a form of combat training. The need for warriors waned at the beginning of the 17th century as Japan isolated itself from the world, and sumo began to be practised as entertainment. Wrestlers became celebrities, and in 1933, the first modern sumo event took place at the Eko-in Temple in Ryogoku, now the epicentre of the sport. The unique physique of sumo’s competitors soon earned it a cult following in Japan and beyond.
On the first day of the tournament, there was a huge crowd of excited ticketholders. “I actually wanted to go to Japan to see it, but it’s too complicated,” one woman in the queue said. Her husband bought the tickets as a birthday present. The pair had travelled down from Birmingham for the evening. “Cheaper than going to Japan, isn’t it?”
Many people were middle-aged, perhaps there to relive the heady days of the Eighties when sumo found an unlikely path to glory via Channel 4. For 64 episodes, sumo tournaments were broadcast on the channel, first presented by the South African zoologist Lyall Watson and later by Brian Blessed. “I was a massive fan of sumo in the late Eighties, and I came for the first time in 1991,” said one man, giddy with excitement.
Fans also enjoy the tradition of the event. “It’s as it was 100 years ago,” one said. “And, as I said to my mate, there’s nothing like going home after hearing a couple of massive guys smacking each other – and the acoustics in there are amazing.”
And it is not just acoustically enhanced smacks. “This is a big moment for sumo,” said Megumi Yamashita, a London-based writer and sumo enthusiast who was born in Yokohama. “Sumo is often misunderstood by people who see it as just fat men fighting – but that’s not what it is. They are trained to be gentle giants.” There are no weight classes in sumo, so maximum bulk is a huge advantage. “Eating is part of the training,” Yamashita said. “It is important that all the food they eat is really tasty. I took them to Hawksmoor, in Covent Garden, the other day, and they ate a lot – steak, oysters and lobster.” For four wrestlers, the bill came to £500.
When I entered the Royal Albert Hall, it had been transformed, complete with a dohyo covered in sand and a roof resembling that of a Shinto shrine. Hiro Morita, the English-language announcer for the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), was our guide to the night’s proceedings. “KONNICHIWA!” he shouted. “KONNICHIWA,” we shouted back. After he had talked us through the running order, it was time for the rikishi (literally “power men”) to arrive. The wrestlers strode in silently, magnificent in their extreme bulk and dressed in hand-embroidered kesho-mawashi robes – the loincloths worn only by the top-ranked professional wrestlers.
The sumo wrestlers perform their shosa (pre-match rituals) three times before each match. First, they rub their hands together to rid themselves of impurities, then clap once to ask for God’s attention, spreading their arms wide to show they are not carrying any weapons before lowering them to their sides to demonstrate that they will fight fairly. Next come the foot stomps, or shiko. The wrestlers perform them 200–300 times a day in morning practice sessions to strengthen their core and work on balance and flexibility. The stomps also serve to ward off evil spirits.
Winning at sumo is “very simple,” according to Morita. “Either force the opponent out of the ring or make them touch the ground with any body part other than the soles of their feet.” The east and west sides face one another – these are divisions in the official ranking system, not based on regions. The east side is considered slightly more prestigious than the west.
Four robed judges sat on purple cushions around the edge of the ring. It was time for the first of 20 bouts. Kotoeiho from the east faced Oshoumi from the west. The wrestlers entered the ring and performed shosa. One demonstrated his superior strength by standing with one leg so high and straight in the air that he was almost in the splits, eliciting oohs from the crowd.
Purifying salt was thrown onto the ring, and the wrestlers slapped their own bellies to clean their hands. They repeated the clapping, stomping and salt routine twice more. Then they began to fight.
It was over in less than ten seconds. The men slammed into each other, keeping their feet firmly planted on the ground until one lifted the other by the side of his belt and hoisted him out of the ring, plonking him down. The audience erupted into cheers. This became the routine in bout after bout. “The action will get more and more intense as the evening goes on and the standard increases,” Morita told us.
In the fourth round, one wrestler weighed 183kgs, while the other was only 147kgs. The smaller man, Tobizaru, from the east side, calls himself the “Flying Monkey” and, according to Morita, “he fights exactly like that: pesky, aggressive and mobile.” He grabbed so much salt, perhaps compensating for his size, that it flicked onto those at the front of the crowd. “A real David vs Goliath match right here,” Morita narrated as, unbelievably, Tobizaru triumphed, flinging his opponent out of the ring to everyone’s disbelief. “Go on, little guy,” someone in the crowd shouted.
Many fighters were suffering from injuries picked up in training and during tough spells in the ring. The roughness of the job and their diet means the average lifespan of a sumo wrestler is around 60 years.
The rounds continued and the booze in the corporate boxes flowed. One of the tournament’s sponsors is The House of Suntory, the whisky company. A pair of fighters emerged with a 60kg weight difference, and the crowd broke out into cruel laughter. It didn’t seem fair, as the lighter man was flung from the ring.
The final round introduced “one of the most popular wrestlers today, if not the most,” Morita boomed, as he presented Ura to a cacophony of noise. The crowd chanted his name, screaming for their favourite as he prepared to fight Onosato. “Anything could happen,” Morita said, and the arena went quiet. As big as a bull, Ura’s tactic was to attack wildly. He was pushed back to the edge of the ring three times dramatically before Onosato sent him flying out of the ring, landing on his hands and knees. The crowd went berserk. The traditions of sumo may not have changed much in 1,500 years – but in the ring, anything can happen.
[Further reading: London’s pizza scene is in search of a soul]
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