SUMO

One my Japanese friend told me about a 1992 Japanese movie Shiko funjatta = Sumo Do, Sumo Don´t.  He found it a hilarious comedy and highly recommended watching it. I find it hilarious, too. It somehow  also put sumo in a different perspective in my mind. Because in Slovakia it seems to be a bit unusual type of sports.  Sumo Do, Sumo Don´t puts it right into the present time.  Why not to visit Ryógoku Kokugikan = indoor sumo hall while in Tokyo and in closest vicinity?  There was no sumo wrestling at the time when I was there as there are only three sumo tournaments in the hall a year – in January, in May and in September.

But luckily Sumo Museum was open and I did not miss it. Good for me as there even was an interesting exhibition of Rikishi´s Palm to be seen. I really stared at some of the palm prints as some of them  were really huge and some of them as old as from the Edo era.  Palm prints are called tegata in Japanese. They have many special meanings. Sumo wrestler who is promoted to sekitori = higher level,  makes his palm print which is then as a “seal” that he is a full fleged rikishi = real strong sumo wrestler. Well, this is simplified explanation but I think it is easier to understand.   Tegatas are respected by people as a charm  and are displayed for praying. There were even foot prints and according their size you just could guess how giant some sumo wrestlers had been.

You can see no photos from the museum because photography was forbidden there.

Sumo wrestling tournaments were held in Ryógoku as early as in the Edo Period and it was during this time from 1603 to 1868 when sumo gained immense popularity and became Japanese national sport, this being expressed by term kokugi in the name of Tokyo sumo “palace” I am writing about.  As sumo is considered to be a Shinto ritual it makes the sumo ring a sacred place. In old times sumo wrestling was even held in shinto temples in Ryógoku itself. We will visit one such shrine here right now.