| Brothers in Sumo – part two Brian Lewin |
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| Yokozuna Comparisons Joe Kuroda |
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| Rikishi of Old John Gunning |
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| Heya Peek Barbara Ann Klein |
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| SFM Interview John Gunning |
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| Sumo 101 Barbara Ann Klein |
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| Photo Bonanza See the Hatsu Basho |
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| Hatsu Basho Review Lon Howard |
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| Lower Division Rikishi Mikko Mattila |
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| Haru Basho Forecast Pierre Wohlleben & Mark Buckton |
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| Kimarite Focus Mikko Mattila |
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| Minusha John McTague |
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| Online Gaming Alexander Nitschke |
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| Kokugi Connections Todd Lambert |
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| Fan Debate Feb's debate sees |
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SFM Cartoons
Benny Loh & Stephen Thompson
In the third of our cartoon bonanzas, sit back and enjoy BL’s offerings and put a caption to ST’s pic to win yourselves a banzuke
| Let’s Hear From You What was it that |
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| Readers’ Letters See what some SFM |
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Sumo Quiz
The Quizmaster
Answer the Qs and win yourself next basho’s banzuke.
What Made You A Fan?
... and then came the internet: via “access technology” – hard and software which translates print documents into voice and braille outputs – I now had the life-transforming opportunity to read about all my enthusiasms independently. With sumo, the impact was momentous. I no longer had to wait several weeks for each sumo fix – and often a few more days until friends had time to administer it. The enormous depth and breadth of the subject was now open to me; I could research any sumo topic, as meticulously as necessary, whenever I wished. Sumo messageboards, the sports pages of English-language Japanese newspapers, sites covering amasumo across the world, they all add up to an acquaintance with sumo which I never imagined possible before I went online.
I surfed into sumofanmag.com, via another site’s links page, in September and was immediately wowed! It’s a marvellous digest of all the ingredients I find so fascinating about sumo, but it also pokes into corners of the sport which I’ve not seen explored anywhere else – it’s a terrific read!
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Enjoy.
Needing some diversion, I prodded the TV on. It wasn’t Christmas fare: a documentary on sumo wrestling. It was a terrible caricature of the sport – anchored by a man renowned for commentating on a bazillion sports without being an authority on any of them, the programme portrayed all rikishi as men who amassed enormous wealth, before plummeting from the pinnacle of success to do a few years as fair-ground exhibits prior to dying at forty after all those years stuffing their guts.
In spite of the trashy presentation and my semi-comatose perception, however, sumo had hooked me during that half-hour. Something compelled me about its ritual and atmosphere, and the fact that a guy of sixteen
No more sumo came my way for two or three years. The UK’s TV channels weren’t showing anything and as a Registered Blind person, the chances of finding any relevant reading matter were even more remote than for most western fans at that time.
Then though, Channel Four got into sumo, this time with the more scholarly accompaniment of Lyall Watson’s commentary (later superseded by the uber-ebullient Brian Blessed). Four’s coverage triggered the publication of several sumo books that I devoured via long-suffering friends, though they were so basic that they pretty much replicated each other’s content.
My next great leap forward came in 1990, when one such friend presented me with an edition of Sumo World he’d
