Opening day of the Osaka Sumo Tournament

Matt and I were lucky enough to be at Osaka when the sumo tournament kicked off. Every year, there are only 6 sumo tournaments held throughout Japan, each tournament lasting 15 days. 3 sumo tournaments are held in Tokyo, and one each at Osaka, Nagoya, and Fukuoka. 

 

The Osaka sumo tournament starts on a Sunday, so Matt and I went to the opening day on March 10, 2013. Outside the Osaka Prefecture gymnasium was decorated with the flags representing each sumo club that will be participating at the tournament as well as hand-written matches that will occur that day.

Matt at the entrance of the gymnasium and us posing with sumo wrestlers (or rikishi), cardboard style. These are very famous rikishi's and are at the top rank. The guy in the middle is non-Japanese:

The tournament day is filled with many sumo matches, starting with the lower class and then preceding to the "main event" with the highest ranked rikishi's around 5pm. So you can technically start watching sumo matches at 10am till 6pm. But not many people do.

Just for reference, a side by side comparison of crowd at 11am vs 5pm:

We were sitting at the arena seats, which resembles normal venue seating at home, a plastic chair with a back, except in Japan, you get a seat cushion! The other seats, which has the blue cushions very close to the ring, are called box seats. They are merely sectioned off squares with cushions on the floor that you sit on. Very uncomfortable for any gaijin (foreigners) who are not used to sitting cross legged.

There are several processions (or dohyō) that happen between sets of matches, where the wrestlers wear their elaborate aprons into the ring and perform a ceremony. The aprons get more elaborate the higher the rank, so the later the day. The wrestlers either belong to the East or West and they face these directions in the ring before they fight. Our seats were facing East, so we saw a lot of direct action.

This is how a match goes:

There is a always a guy who sings the names of the wrestlers who will be competing. Then every wrestler performs this same sequence of actions: he faces the audience, claps his hands, then stomps his leg. This is the drive away the evil spirits from the ring. Then the referee (who is also dressed up more elaborately as the day progresses) steps into the ring and gets ready. The top 2 division wrestlers perform an additional ritual. They get to drink a ladleful of power water at their corner of the ring, wipe their face with a cloth (or power paper), and sprinkle salt into the ring for purification. This can actually repeat several times before a match starts.

When the wrestlers finally crouch down at the starting line, both wrestlers have to have both fists touch the ground before the match can start. Between the crouch position and both fists down, the wrestlers are supposed to play mind games by staring down his opponent. Then they charge at each other and tries to either push his opponent out of the ring, or force him to touch to ground with anything other than his feet. The match can only take maximum 4 minutes.

Here's some action shots:

 

 

 

All in all,    AWESOME Time.  

So glad we went and can't wait to go again in Nagoya.

FYI, I took a lot of pictures and videos of this experience and can send you the link to my dropbox. Just let me know and I'll add your email address for access. I took videos of a few matches as well as all the rituals.