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Jun Iwata is a retired Japanese businessman who lived in the West for many years. After retiring, he decided to go back to school, obtained a Master’s in American Literature, and is currently pursuing a Ph. D. on the same subject. He now teaches Business English at Mukogawa Women’s University, in Nishinomiya, Japan. VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS
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The
Weight is Right to Fight As
a national sport, the Grand Sumo Wrestling Match has been loved by
Japanese for over a thousand years at least now. Incidentally,
I happened to find in my recent readings that Charles Chaplin also
had watched both of them when he visited Japan in 1932 as was
described in his "Auto-biography" published in 1964.
Loving Japan very much, he liked Kabuki as well, seemingly
preferring that to the Sumo-wrestling. We well understand his love
of Kabuki since he was himself one of the greatest actors and
theatrical businessmen and, accordingly, his admiration described
fully in his book. There, he even praised and compared one of Kabuki
dramas to the famous tragedy Romeo and Juliet and defined the
Kabuki as a mixture of ancient and modern. In
the meantime, the Sumo, a more mixture of ancient and modern than
Kabuki, was reported so simply as "the prime Minister's son
invited us as his guests to the Suomi ( sic ) wrestling matches".
On that same day, on May 15, 1932, the military terrorists attacked
and assassinated the then prime minister of Japan, Tuyosi Inukai,
and that became the main cause for Japan to continue its precipitant
down-fall to the war. The first information of the minister's death
was brought to his son just when he was watching the Suomi
matches with Mr. Chaplin. That may well be a most probable reason
why Mr. Chaplin couldn't concentrate on and didn't mention much
about the Sumo. Otherwise he could have enjoyed the same beauty of
style as Kabuki, and some exciting matches very similar to those
fought by a small drifter against huge Keystone-cop in many of his
silent films. Differently
from the current tendency that all hand-to-hand matches, like boxing,
wrestling and even Judo have changed their rules to place fighters
in different categories, according to different weight, Sumo only
has persistently kept no-weight-distinction policy throughout its
history. And that was made possible by just only two basic rules. The first rule was established in the year of 726 by the emperor, Shomu-the great, to ban such fatal attacks as hitting with bare knuckle, or kicking right into the body. Before this formal decree, Sumo said to have been fought until one of the fighters was killed or lethally injured. With this first and critical improvement, the bout started to be decided with such simple and decisive standard as which one of wrestlers first touched his part and/or parts of body to the ground other than his footsole. The
second was adoption of the fighting ring by the famous worrier/ruler
Nobunaga Oda, in the 16th century, about 850 years later from the
first. And this change, aimed at regulating the fight, which up to
this point took place in unlimited space, from now on was to be done
within a circle of 3.9 m. diameters on a square mound, and which was
called Dohyo. And with this, another basic rule was established for
judgment of win/loss of the match, namely to push or throw the
opponent out of the narrow circle so that his any part of body first
touch the ground outside the ring. That much simple again. These
two simple rules, however, brought a remarkable change to the
Sumo-matches. Differently from the past death match in the wide
field, medium or even small sized wrestlers could often win the
matches with such fighting devises as to have their bigger opponents
touch or sweep the Dohyo-ground, or make them step out the circle
line first. Thus many fighting tricks were thought out, initially
the number was said to be 48 or 72, even 300 in all now. With those
tricks, Sumo bouts last only about 10-15 seconds in average; Sumo
has become the simplest and quickest bout in the world ever. Then as
a course of the matter, the quality of judgment must have also been
refined to its extreme exactness with the quickest acumen. And from
this point of view, the history of Sumo is the history of both
cultivating numbers of tricks/skills within narrow fighting premise
and also that of extreme refinement of exact and fair judge
of the match. Accordingly,
it is quite natural that so many as 6 judges in total are to watch
the Grand-Sumo-bouts in a narrow ring to make exact and fair
judgment. A small adjustment: diameter of the ring was widened
slightly to 4.5m from traditional 3.9m in 1955 though. In general,
the announcements of the beginning and end of the Sumo rituals and
matches are conducted exclusively by the referee ( Gyoji ) who
stands on the Dohyo. But once if his judge ( the most venerable )
leaves any doubt, another 5 ring-side judges are to be summoned onto
the ring at once to audit the judge. When they cannot yet be sure,
then the Videotape recorder will be invited to join the jury. It is
very remarkable that the most modern device has been taken up by
thought-to-be most conservative Sumo-Association in 1969, more than
30 years ago. There is no other following that formally or
systematically either, yet. Incidentally
the top two referees carry always a dagger with them on Dohyo and
that means if they made a misjudgment they would kill themselves at
once on the spot. So much serious is the judgment supposed to be in
the Sumo matches. But recently a TV commentator asked one of top
referees, "Do you really kill yourself when you make a wrong
judgment ?", the referee replied at once " Never !"
That was a funny interview, and many people still make references to
it. It
is true that those two rules of judgment within a narrow battle
domain made it possible for a smaller, lighter Sumo wrestlers who
know more tricks to defeat the bigger fighters and even a Yokozuna
grand champion. But although such surprising victories happen
reasonably often, they don’t happen often enough. The reason for
this is that in all hand-to-hand fighting, the heaviness of fighter's
body often woks better than any of his fighting skills. For example,
we empirically know that when two fighters with same level of
fighting technique meet, the heavier one will most likely win the
match. Or once when a fighter is heavier than his opponent by
approximately 20kg., then he will win almost every time, because the
substantial difference of heaviness surely works. Because of above
reasons, it has long been a traditional effort for all Sumo coaches
to seek out any prospective heavyweight wrestlers from every corner
of Japan. Thus
together with the strenuous effort of securing as many prospective
applicants for Sumo as possible, a very effective "know-how of
diet" to get right weight to fight has been developed. And that
is the well-known Sumo cuisine "Chanko-Nabe"--a hodgepodge
of all fish and chicken meat and various vegetables. When Chanko is
prepared, as much varieties and as many numbers of food are welcome
but significantly except for the meat of quadruped. Can you imagine
reason why ? The four-legged creatures are just the image of lost
Sumo-wrestlers with their hands touched on the ground. That is
merely not more than a tabu-image. But what a clever nutritive
choice it is eventually, if not intentionally thought-out! At
the same time, the most appropriate manners have long been set-up
about how to enjoy the Chanko-Nabe effectively. The important
know-how to get weight stays in one simple and firm custom of
two-meal-a-day system. The Sumo wrestlers are said to take more than
8,000 calories a day from the Chanko, but isn't that terribly too
much ? It's surely not. Sumo-wrestlers are to wake up very early
every morning ( 5 or 6 a.m.), start their training at once, and
continue it up until noon. Then they have the first Chanko-meal of
the day only. The reason for this regimen is because if they eat
anything before training, the extremely hard and long training makes
all wrestlers vomit every thing they ate. After this very late and
heavy meal, they obligatorily take a long nap and loaf away till the
next diet at around 6:00 p.m. After the dinner again, they spend
their free idle time and go to bed very early at around 9 or 10.00.
Thus they keep very much a regular life consuming the majority of
the 8,000 calories they took the day before in hard training in the
next morning. The rest of refined nutrients and calories are
assigned for building up their muscles and weight, not to be mere
fat, but to give them a physique fit for the Sumo fight. By
this effective diet with ever increasing food-stuff, all
Sumo-wrestlers became bigger and heavier now, about 1.5 times bigger
and heavier than 50 years ago. However ironically, when all
Sumo-wrestles became successfully big and heavy, there turned up an
urgent necessity for the Sumo-coaches who now have to well manage
their gymnasiums to survive. What they should do then ? To grow more
sizable Sumo-wrestlers quicker than other Gyms or to go get those
bigger from even abroad. Which will be more quick and effective ?
Thus commenced the first importation of a Sumo wrestler from the
western hemisphere, just same as very western idea to utilize a
mechanical devise to the traditional Sumo-judge. Another more
remarkable change or one step beyond that had taken place in the
Sumo-world. It
started with the welcoming Takamiyama from Hawaii in the year of
1964, and it was an
epoch-making incident in the history of Sumo after more than 400
years of invention of Dohyo. Then quickly following Takamiyama's
success, other extra heavy weight fighters came to join the Japanese
Sumo. Those are Konishiki, Akebono and Musashi-maru. It is without
doubt that they brought grandeur to the Sumo matches together with
their weight. We loved their aggressive fights against the
formidable Yokozuna-brothers, Takano-hana and Wakano-hana, both born
Japanese. Most exciting were the fights between Konishiki and
Maino-Umi, the heaviest and the lightest, over 280 kgs. against
about 95 kgs. or even less ! How would Mr. Chaplin have said, if he
had seen this humorous match on the ring? Especially when the
smaller won with his tricky skills. And it surely occurred several
times, making us all exited. However,
after the retirement of those huge three, it seems for us that again
the idea of a right weight to fight is back in fashion. Especially
with taking it into our consideration that the space of Dohyo
remains relatively too narrow. As a direct result of it or not, we
have now only and one Yokozuna with less than standard size but with
varieties of skills. The only one current grand champion, Asashoryu,
who came from Mongolia, displayed his outstanding Sumo technique in
the touring Grand Sumo Tournament held in Seoul last February for
the first time in the long history of Grand Sumo. The Korean
government has prohibited any manifestation of Japanese culture to
come in for over half a century after the Second World War. Thus
there was a bit of irony in this impressive event when the Korean
people welcomed and praised the Sumo and the beauty in its rituals
and formalities, but our only grand champion is a foreigner, who by
the way took honorably on the very memorable occasion. Keeping their traditional rituals and formalities very strictly on the one hand, taking up significant innovation and revolutionary change so quickly and timely on the other, Japanese Grand Sumo-Matches have lived their long history so far. Now however, we have imminent disputes or quarrels about two points that may affect much on the future of our Grand Sumo. The
first is the persistent favoritism for Japanese wrestlers by the
"Yokozuna-Council" ( which has the highest authority on
approval and recall of the Grand Champion ), steered
by an extremely conservative and senile journalist.
When Konishiki became strong enough to be nominated to a Grand
Champion, a harsh criticism was raised by the council saying that
the applicant lacked Sumo spirit, as well as decency in his
mentality, something said to be indispensable for the honorable
status of Yokozuna. With his very cheerful character and with high
dancing skills was Konishiki simply too western for the council?
Just same as Shakespeare's drama, the council seemed to insist
getting foreign flesh without single drop of the blood.
And again the same happened against Asashoryu, the Mongolian
Grand-champion. When he committed some mistakes in his formal and
private lives, he was blamed so hideously by the council, suggesting
even withdrawal of his title, again due to his lacking of the
Decency/Spirit required to Yokozuna. Rather many of us suspect that
all of the above reasons is merely reflect current status of decline
( and not "fall" yet hopefully) of the Pax-Japonica in the
Sumo world where Japanese Yokozuna – and them only – d ominate. Another
is the desperate guard by Japan-Sumo-Association against female
participation in any Grand-Sumo rituals performed on the Dohyo. All
past requests by female to that effect have been flatly turned down
as a fatal transgression of authentic Sumo tradition. For example,
the female governor of Osaka prefecture, a great Sumo fan herself,
has been fighting against that tradition for several years now but
totally to no avail. And in this same issue matter, Kabuki also has
long been kept for male actors exclusively for several hundred years
now. Why is it that in Japan, every traditional culture has to be so
obstinately male dominated and how it can survive in that way in the
future ? What would Charlie Chaplin say to this, whose film hero started courageously for a new life, hand-in-hand with his lover, looking ahead together. What would he think, if he were alive today, of this blind and stubborn attitude by the Sumo authorities, who insist on ignoring that women exist, and the foreigners are here to stay? Are these irrelevant questions? |
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Por JUN IWATA
So every time when
we introduce our most representative Japanese performance or
entertainment, we always refer to the Sumo together with the Kabuki.
Both of them are indigenous of Japan, both singularly Japanese and
full of ethnic formalities.