S.O.S. (Shinjinrui on Sumo)
by Chris Gould
In
the first of a three-part series, Chris Gould examines why so many
young Japanese are sumo-averse, and suggests ways in which sumo may
overcome the problem.
On 11th September 2003, my outlook on sumo changed profoundly. In a palatial Saitama residence, I sat and watched NHK’s live sumo broadcast with the octogenarian grandmother of a 23-year-old medical student named Atsushi (Aki). The grandmother was more chicken-like than human. Literally bent double after years of slavish labour in the rice-paddies, her miserable existence was doubtless rendered more tolerable by sumo broadcasts. But of all the people I met during that trip to Japan, she was the only one to accompany me through a full two hours of televised sumo.
The enthusiasm she harboured for Japan’s “national sport” was woefully absent from her grandson, who only bought a Kokugikan ticket after a full week’s arm-twisting. When we finally entered the Kokugikan, Aki spent most of the afternoon laughing and feeling totally vindicated in mocking my love of sumo. He believed that if ever evidence were needed to condemn sumo as “a sport for old people,” it could be gleefully gathered from the surrounding audience, the average hair-colour of which lay somewhere between light-grey and snow-white.
Within a year, Aki would have yet more cause to feel vindicated. Isegahama oyakata, a popular former ozeki, alleged to a Japanese daily that the Nihon Sumo Kyokai (NSK) was concerned about attendances and that he was actively advising the NSK on the issue. To anybody who had entered a half-full Kokugikan at the time, this development could hardly be described as a shock. However, this was the first instance of a senior NSK figure going public on the question of attendances, and a clear sign of ruffled feathers in sumo circles.
Sumo has indeed taken rather a battering from the changes sweeping Japan in general. The values sumo upholds – fukoku-kyohei (a strong society) and bushido (the way of the warrior) – are deemed by the vast majority of Japanese youngsters to be hopelessly at odds with the affluent, semi-westernised society surrounding them. Most youthful Japanese cannot find beauty in being fat any more than they can find sense in exhausting one’s body for moderate financial reward. They have little time for doctrinaire interpretations of the Shinto religion and for the emotional restraint which sumotori must exercise in defeat or victory. (Indeed, one youngster – a waitress in the Harrods sushi-bar – asked if my love of sumo was a mental illness). As a result, while the Akis of this world flock towards K-1, baseball, football and tarentos (TV “stars”) with outrageous – yellow, pink, red, blue - hair colours, sumo appears worryingly reliant on the grandparents of Aki, predominantly too old to attend and too frail to champion its cause.
For sumo to continue thriving, it must somehow cultivate sizeable support among Japanese youngsters. Japan’s under-30s, termed the shinjinrui or “new race,” appear to have three key grievances with sumo, namely: that it is unattractive to watch; that sumotori are uninspiring; and that the structure of the sport is insufficiently user-friendly.
This article analyses the contention that sumo is unattractive to watch. It looks at whether shinjinrui might find sumo more appealing if sumotori lost weight, altered their style of combat, spent less time tossing salt, and proved themselves superior to K-1 athletes.
Weight problems?
With Japan having frequently boasted the lowest obesity rate in the world, sumotori have always stuck out from the crowd. Traditionally, their bulk has still not prevented them from assuming sex symbol status – especially if under 130 kg (287 lbs.) in weight. However, Japan’s shinjinrui have grown up in a society permeated by western fads, and their craving for Rie-Miyazawa waistlines renders them more nervous towards obesity than any of their ancestors. In the words of Michiko, a young midwife from Toyama: “Many Japanese like slim people. It is just not popular to be big. Most sumotori are just not good looking enough.”
Yuko, a 26-year-old administrator, argues that heavy sumotori are more difficult to respect because they have been denuded of the powerful symbolism once associated with them. “After the war defeat in 1945, many Japanese people fell into poverty and had little to eat,” she explains. “They longed for men who were strong, physically and mentally, to protect them. After 60 years of peace, however, the young in Japan do not see sumo wrestlers as “protectors” of the nation and generally have a bad opinion of people who are fat. Young people are crazy about keeping their weight down, and, in their eyes, sumo wrestlers don’t present a healthy image”.
Before the new millennium, the NSK’s conception of “health” was diametrically opposed to that held by shinjinrui. The doctrine that a young deshi would most surely succeed if he gained weight steadily throughout his career became almost fanatically interpreted after the rise of the three giant Hawaiians (Konishiki, Akebono and Musashimaru), whose success was rather dubiously attributed to sheer bulk alone. In a vain attempt to match the Hawaiians for size, novice sumotori raided fast food outlets to supplement their high-calorie chanko diet. In doing so, they appeared evermore “unhealthy” in the eyes of shinjinrui.
However, by the late 1990s, sumo tournaments were becoming blighted by a series of weight-related injuries and, in response, the NSK demanded that all sumotori have their body-mass indexes constantly monitored. The policy shift has produced significant results. Whereas in November 1990, the five heaviest rikishi possessed an average weight of 192 kg (423 lbs.), in March 2006 this average had fallen to 174 kg (384 lbs.) Also, the mean weight for the ten heaviest rikishi tumbled from 174 to 164 kg between November 1990 and March 2006.
The average weight of a Makunouchi rikishi, however, has remained constant at 150 kg over the past 16 years, and thus significantly above the mean weight of the six sumotori deemed “most attractive” by young Japanese interviewees: Chiyonofuji, Kyokudozan, Terao, Mainoumi and the Hanada brothers. The fact that this 150 kg average is unlikely to fall should be welcomed. Nobody who has stood by a 165 kg (364 lbs.) sumotori can fail to be impressed by the sheer power symbolized by that awesome physique. No-one who has had their ears pounded by the sound of two 165 kg rikishi colliding will ever forget the experience. In the words of Fumiko, a 17-year-old schoolgirl: “If sumo were full of light men, old people would definitely not watch it. Sumo would become too much like the other sports, and would lose a lot of tradition and identity.” Heaviness is literally a large part of what makes sumo intriguing. If this attribute were better taken advantage of, it could still appeal to Japan’s youngsters. For young Japanese are not deterred by blubbery flesh alone. They are also deterred by its propensity to hinder athletic, fast-paced combat.
Dislikeable combat style?
Inappropriate as it may seem, shinjinrui have a tendency to compare sumotori with agile K-1 fighters and fleet-footed footballers. They notice that K-1 fighters appear to hit harder than sumotori, as they are permitted to use clenched fists. They notice that a head-kick from a K-1 fighter looks far more spectacular than sumo”s ketaguri (inside ankle sweep) or sotogake (.outside leg trip). They note that footballers move much more rapidly and sinuously than sumotori. And they find that both K-1 contests and football matches last far longer than a sumo bout, even though they have no need to incorporate “boring” Shinto rituals beforehand. In the words of Kenji, a sumo-sized student: “Sumo shows strength, but it is not as speedy and exciting as K-1.” Keisuke, another student, adds: “I like football now. It has much more movement than sumo and all its shiko stamping.”
Even sumo coaches are hard pressed to disagree. One of them told me: “Football is fast. Sumo is slow and requires more thinking.” However, the virtues of “thinking” cannot be easily marketed to the instant-access generation of shinjinrui, capable of satisfying so many wants through technology before even having time to reflect.
Although sumo can find plenty of evidence to refute such articles of faith (not least when replaying Konishiki-Onokuni matches), Japanese youngsters steadfastly believe that torikumi based upon Large versus Large are slow-moving and dull. Youngsters also believe that although sumo matches involving Small against Small demonstrate faster movement and admirable agility, they are still not as entertaining as K-1. Thus, sumo should market itself to shinjinrui by playing to their love of extremes. Generally speaking, the most obviously entertaining torikumi are those consisting of Little versus Large. (Who can forget Mainoumi’s magnificent uchigake (onside leg trip) against Akebono in November 1991, or Asashoryu’s dazzling shitatenage (underarm throw) on Musashimaru in May 2001?) Whenever Little faces Large, the tempo is fast and the combat is furious. TV and internet adverts should relentlessly remind shinjinrui that not even K-1 is crazy enough to force Little to fight Large using the same basic techniques. Sumo should exploit shinjinrui sympathy towards lighter wrestlers and encourage them to cheer their beloved underdog to victory.
This strategy assumes particular importance given that youngsters find K-1 techniques infinitely more attractive than sumo kimarite. “Sumo wins are less impressive,” said the 17-year old Fumiko, to nods from her three friends. Furthermore, some shinjinrui find sumo custom so unbearably restrictive that they better enjoy sumo when its rules are broken! Several interviewees, although reluctant to openly condone yokozuna Asashoryu’s infamous groping of Kyokushuzan’s hair, still found the incident more entertaining than a legal sumo kimarite. Of course, new kimarite terms are occasionally added to the sumo glossary – the last such occasion being in March 2001 – but these terms are introduced retrospectively, and only serve to explain existing sumo phenomena rather than invite sumotori to perform new, and radically different, moves. Shinjinrui will never be won over by sumo techniques alone. It is the context in which kimarite are used – preferably by Little on Large – that will arouse their enthusiasm.
Bad timing?
The timing of matches renders sumo even less attractive to the shinjinrui. The sumo expert Liliane Fujimori captures my sentiments entirely: “In the West, we often find ourselves asking how it is that certain persons can permit themselves to… watch sumo… for fifteen consecutive days from morning to evening! It is not only the wealthy and the retired who should be entitled to this privilege.”
The majority of shinjinrui interviewed favoured my suggestion that the midweek top division matches be moved to the evening, say 7.30pm, to allow for younger people to view them after work. Football, baseball and K-1 promoters would not dream of staging midweek matches in the afternoon (unless during the World Cup), so why should sumo? Furthermore, with the makunouchi schedule lasting but two and a quarter hours, its separation from the lower divisions would present youngsters with a spectacle of similar length to a football match, and thus more in keeping with their sports-related attention spans. Clearly, the NSK might be hard pressed to adjust working patterns and meal times, and the tsukebito would probably lose yet more sleep, but it should be stressed that makunouchi sumotori successfully stage evening performances when touring abroad. However, some young Japanese are adamant that the timing of torikumi matters precious little. “Showing sumo at a different time makes no difference,” said one of them. “It is just not exciting enough. There is too much shikiri-naoshi (preparing for the bout).”
Somnolent shikiri-naoshi?
Among the shinjinrui, a firm conviction exists that sumo torikumi which last a mere few seconds simply do not warrant a four-minute build-up. To the unconverted, sumo’s shikiri-naoshi appears considerably less eventful than the prologues of K-1 fights, which contain verbal insults galore and even the odd face-mask. The shikiri-naoshi irks youngsters considerably. It is underpinned by a religion which they barely understand, let alone believe in, and appears moderated by a high degree of emotional restraint which is more likely to remind them of a strict, conformist upbringing than the unadulterated fun they share with friends. The question is therefore begged: would a one-minute shikiri-naoshi make youngsters more inclined to watch sumo?
I am yet to discover another proposition capable of provoking shinjinrui into such violent laughter. “It could work,” was the assessment of Yu, a Tokyo language student, upon controlling her giggling, “but wrestlers need time to concentrate and create an atmosphere.” Kentaro, another language student, chuckled: “We can’t have a one-minute shikiri-naoshi. It is important for the wrestlers to put on a performance.” Kentaro did not mean that it was “important” for himself, though. Like Yu, he firmly believed that the older generation had a right to enjoy their shikiri-naoshi, and that this right should not be impinged upon by shinjinrui. Of course, the notion that outsiders are not really supposed to influence insiders has been rife throughout Japan for centuries. But 21st-century sumo should view this notion with trepidation. Kentaro, Yu and many of their contemporaries often imply that their enjoyment of sumo can only be increased if the enjoyment of older people is compromised, and that they would rather resign themselves to disliking sumo rather than risk antagonising their elders. Sumo will never recruit hoards of youthful admirers while this perception exists.
Rather, sumo must stress to shinjinrui that their interests are not diametrically opposed to those of older fans, and must assert that the shikiri-naoshi offers something for everyone. Whereas older fans simply appreciate every aspect of it, young people should be particularly fascinated by the expressions on wrestlers’ faces as they size each other up. The older generation may detest Asashoryu’s scowling looks in his pre-match build-up, but younger fans find them both intriguing and amusing. They should coo when wrestlers venomously slap their own bodies and become curious as to how effectively the power behind such slaps can be deployed on the opponent. They should be anxious to know what each wrestler would like to say to the other, were they permitted a K-1 style press conference. In short, the religious aspect of the shikiri-naoshi should be downplayed to shinjinrui, in favour of highlighting the gripping tension and scintillating mental warfare on display. Under no circumstances should the shikiri-naoshi be shortened. Older fans already react angrily when the NHK broadcast substitutes shikiri-naoshi coverage with special features and interviews.
In the West, though, sumo must tailor its rituals to the type of audience it wishes to attract. It if seeks approval from those intrigued by all things far-Eastern, a four-minute shikiri-naoshi is perfect. If, on the other hand, it seeks to win over those who are purely interested in combat, a shorter build-up is strongly advised. The full-length shikiri-naoshi worked beautifully in front of 11,000 UK fans at the Royal Albert Hall, most of whom were acquainted with it through Channel Four’s sumo broadcasts. It also impressed the majority of supporters at Grand Sumo Las Vegas in 2005. Conversely, when America’s World Wrestling Entertainment ambitiously attempted to stage a sumo bout involving Akebono in front of 20,000 pro-wrestling fans craving for choke-slams and suplexes, even one-minute of salt-tossing was met with derision. However, a similarly-minded audience which gathered to witness the 2006 US Sumo Open was suitably placated by the fact that amateur sumo requires combatants merely to bend their knees and clap once before wrestling. As long as some element of the build-up remains – even if just a tantalising glimpse – sumo can simultaneously respect tradition while outreaching to fans from pastures new.
K-1 competition
The task of re-endearing sumo to young people was made decidedly more difficult by the events of 31st December 2003. On that New Year’s Eve, around half of Japan saw a former yokozuna, Akebono Taro, bludgeoned to defeat by Bob Sapp in a K-1 fight.
It is impossible to underestimate the impact of Akebono’s painful pounding on Japan’s impressionable shinjinrui. Sapp had become a cult figure in their eyes after transferring his outgoing personality to a series of TV commercials. He was seen to represent the forces of modernisation, whereas Akebono’s sumo history aligned him with the forces of tradition. The shinjinrui not only saw modernisation win, but also saw a rather average K-1 fighter defeat a yokozuna, sumo’s symbol of invincibility. Their suspicions of sumotori no longer being the toughest warriors in Japan were spectacularly reinforced, while the yokozuna dohyo-iri – designed to portray the yokozuna as sheer magnificence personified – was in danger of appearing little more than bravado.
Kenji, the chunky teenager from Tokyo, spoke for many peers when saying: “I don’t like Akebono as a fighter. He is just heavy. Not strong. No technique either.” Other teenagers simply laugh whenever the words “Akebono” and “K-1” inhabit the same sentence. Michiko, the midwife from Toyama, sympathetically tried to defend the rank of yokozuna in the light of Akebono’s thrashing. “A yokozuna is just… God!” she exclaimed. “[But] you watched the K-1 fight and he was not a yokozuna. I can’t respect that.”
Her implication was that had Akebono – or indeed any great yokozuna – fought Bob Sapp like a yokozuna, he would have won. It is true that Akebono faced Sapp while being considerably short of peak condition. Unfortunately for Michiko’s sentiments, though, a much fitter Akebono has since fought eight K-1 fights and has only triumphed in one of them. In his brave quest to become the first yokozuna to test his skills against – and prove his superiority over – martial artists from other disciplines, he has instead cruelly exposed sumo’s limitations. As sumo prohibits closed fists, sumotori are unable to practice absorbing punches to the head, and this places them at an immediate disadvantage in the K-1 ring. Whenever a sumotori sheds blood and collapses due to a punch (and Akebono is not the only ex-rikishi to have suffered this fate in K-1), the stereotypical shinjinrui conceptions of elegant, muscled K-1 athletes versus doddery, obese sumo wrestlers receive an emphatic stamp of validation.
To allay such (mis)conceptions, the NSK should embrace the following strategy. It must simply highlight the years of training that sumotori must undergo before they become exceptional makunouchi warriors. It must then remind shinjinrui that it also takes years of dedication for K-1 fighters to truly master their mixed-martial art. It must discretely explain away Akebono’s defeat by stressing that nobody who suddenly switches a martial art can expect to train for a mere few weeks and then defeat an experienced opponent. Crucially, it must then stress that the disadvantages faced by Akebono in K-1 would be mirrored by those facing by Bob Sapp were he to suddenly become a sumo-ist. Ironically enough, Sapp did quip before his match with Akebono that “we could do it sumo rules”. Had the former yokozuna held him to his word, he would surely have altered a few shinjinrui perceptions of sumotori. Perhaps the NSK should call Sapp’s bluff and offer a place in a heya to any K-1 fighter who is willing. Sumo would certainly generate additional interest in the unlikely event that a K-1 athlete would accept the offer.
This is but an introduction to S.O.S. In the next issue of SFM, we spotlight the unease with which young Japanese view sumo personalities, and examine whether more youngsters would feel inclined to watch sumo if it produced a Japanese Yokozuna, offered women a more prominent role, or permitted sumotori to show more emotion.
Sumo Fan Magazine Home
On 11th September 2003, my outlook on sumo changed profoundly. In a palatial Saitama residence, I sat and watched NHK’s live sumo broadcast with the octogenarian grandmother of a 23-year-old medical student named Atsushi (Aki). The grandmother was more chicken-like than human. Literally bent double after years of slavish labour in the rice-paddies, her miserable existence was doubtless rendered more tolerable by sumo broadcasts. But of all the people I met during that trip to Japan, she was the only one to accompany me through a full two hours of televised sumo.
The enthusiasm she harboured for Japan’s “national sport” was woefully absent from her grandson, who only bought a Kokugikan ticket after a full week’s arm-twisting. When we finally entered the Kokugikan, Aki spent most of the afternoon laughing and feeling totally vindicated in mocking my love of sumo. He believed that if ever evidence were needed to condemn sumo as “a sport for old people,” it could be gleefully gathered from the surrounding audience, the average hair-colour of which lay somewhere between light-grey and snow-white.
Within a year, Aki would have yet more cause to feel vindicated. Isegahama oyakata, a popular former ozeki, alleged to a Japanese daily that the Nihon Sumo Kyokai (NSK) was concerned about attendances and that he was actively advising the NSK on the issue. To anybody who had entered a half-full Kokugikan at the time, this development could hardly be described as a shock. However, this was the first instance of a senior NSK figure going public on the question of attendances, and a clear sign of ruffled feathers in sumo circles.
Sumo has indeed taken rather a battering from the changes sweeping Japan in general. The values sumo upholds – fukoku-kyohei (a strong society) and bushido (the way of the warrior) – are deemed by the vast majority of Japanese youngsters to be hopelessly at odds with the affluent, semi-westernised society surrounding them. Most youthful Japanese cannot find beauty in being fat any more than they can find sense in exhausting one’s body for moderate financial reward. They have little time for doctrinaire interpretations of the Shinto religion and for the emotional restraint which sumotori must exercise in defeat or victory. (Indeed, one youngster – a waitress in the Harrods sushi-bar – asked if my love of sumo was a mental illness). As a result, while the Akis of this world flock towards K-1, baseball, football and tarentos (TV “stars”) with outrageous – yellow, pink, red, blue - hair colours, sumo appears worryingly reliant on the grandparents of Aki, predominantly too old to attend and too frail to champion its cause.
For sumo to continue thriving, it must somehow cultivate sizeable support among Japanese youngsters. Japan’s under-30s, termed the shinjinrui or “new race,” appear to have three key grievances with sumo, namely: that it is unattractive to watch; that sumotori are uninspiring; and that the structure of the sport is insufficiently user-friendly.
This article analyses the contention that sumo is unattractive to watch. It looks at whether shinjinrui might find sumo more appealing if sumotori lost weight, altered their style of combat, spent less time tossing salt, and proved themselves superior to K-1 athletes.
Weight problems?
With Japan having frequently boasted the lowest obesity rate in the world, sumotori have always stuck out from the crowd. Traditionally, their bulk has still not prevented them from assuming sex symbol status – especially if under 130 kg (287 lbs.) in weight. However, Japan’s shinjinrui have grown up in a society permeated by western fads, and their craving for Rie-Miyazawa waistlines renders them more nervous towards obesity than any of their ancestors. In the words of Michiko, a young midwife from Toyama: “Many Japanese like slim people. It is just not popular to be big. Most sumotori are just not good looking enough.”
Yuko, a 26-year-old administrator, argues that heavy sumotori are more difficult to respect because they have been denuded of the powerful symbolism once associated with them. “After the war defeat in 1945, many Japanese people fell into poverty and had little to eat,” she explains. “They longed for men who were strong, physically and mentally, to protect them. After 60 years of peace, however, the young in Japan do not see sumo wrestlers as “protectors” of the nation and generally have a bad opinion of people who are fat. Young people are crazy about keeping their weight down, and, in their eyes, sumo wrestlers don’t present a healthy image”.
Before the new millennium, the NSK’s conception of “health” was diametrically opposed to that held by shinjinrui. The doctrine that a young deshi would most surely succeed if he gained weight steadily throughout his career became almost fanatically interpreted after the rise of the three giant Hawaiians (Konishiki, Akebono and Musashimaru), whose success was rather dubiously attributed to sheer bulk alone. In a vain attempt to match the Hawaiians for size, novice sumotori raided fast food outlets to supplement their high-calorie chanko diet. In doing so, they appeared evermore “unhealthy” in the eyes of shinjinrui.
However, by the late 1990s, sumo tournaments were becoming blighted by a series of weight-related injuries and, in response, the NSK demanded that all sumotori have their body-mass indexes constantly monitored. The policy shift has produced significant results. Whereas in November 1990, the five heaviest rikishi possessed an average weight of 192 kg (423 lbs.), in March 2006 this average had fallen to 174 kg (384 lbs.) Also, the mean weight for the ten heaviest rikishi tumbled from 174 to 164 kg between November 1990 and March 2006.
The average weight of a Makunouchi rikishi, however, has remained constant at 150 kg over the past 16 years, and thus significantly above the mean weight of the six sumotori deemed “most attractive” by young Japanese interviewees: Chiyonofuji, Kyokudozan, Terao, Mainoumi and the Hanada brothers. The fact that this 150 kg average is unlikely to fall should be welcomed. Nobody who has stood by a 165 kg (364 lbs.) sumotori can fail to be impressed by the sheer power symbolized by that awesome physique. No-one who has had their ears pounded by the sound of two 165 kg rikishi colliding will ever forget the experience. In the words of Fumiko, a 17-year-old schoolgirl: “If sumo were full of light men, old people would definitely not watch it. Sumo would become too much like the other sports, and would lose a lot of tradition and identity.” Heaviness is literally a large part of what makes sumo intriguing. If this attribute were better taken advantage of, it could still appeal to Japan’s youngsters. For young Japanese are not deterred by blubbery flesh alone. They are also deterred by its propensity to hinder athletic, fast-paced combat.
Dislikeable combat style?
Inappropriate as it may seem, shinjinrui have a tendency to compare sumotori with agile K-1 fighters and fleet-footed footballers. They notice that K-1 fighters appear to hit harder than sumotori, as they are permitted to use clenched fists. They notice that a head-kick from a K-1 fighter looks far more spectacular than sumo”s ketaguri (inside ankle sweep) or sotogake (.outside leg trip). They note that footballers move much more rapidly and sinuously than sumotori. And they find that both K-1 contests and football matches last far longer than a sumo bout, even though they have no need to incorporate “boring” Shinto rituals beforehand. In the words of Kenji, a sumo-sized student: “Sumo shows strength, but it is not as speedy and exciting as K-1.” Keisuke, another student, adds: “I like football now. It has much more movement than sumo and all its shiko stamping.”
Even sumo coaches are hard pressed to disagree. One of them told me: “Football is fast. Sumo is slow and requires more thinking.” However, the virtues of “thinking” cannot be easily marketed to the instant-access generation of shinjinrui, capable of satisfying so many wants through technology before even having time to reflect.
Although sumo can find plenty of evidence to refute such articles of faith (not least when replaying Konishiki-Onokuni matches), Japanese youngsters steadfastly believe that torikumi based upon Large versus Large are slow-moving and dull. Youngsters also believe that although sumo matches involving Small against Small demonstrate faster movement and admirable agility, they are still not as entertaining as K-1. Thus, sumo should market itself to shinjinrui by playing to their love of extremes. Generally speaking, the most obviously entertaining torikumi are those consisting of Little versus Large. (Who can forget Mainoumi’s magnificent uchigake (onside leg trip) against Akebono in November 1991, or Asashoryu’s dazzling shitatenage (underarm throw) on Musashimaru in May 2001?) Whenever Little faces Large, the tempo is fast and the combat is furious. TV and internet adverts should relentlessly remind shinjinrui that not even K-1 is crazy enough to force Little to fight Large using the same basic techniques. Sumo should exploit shinjinrui sympathy towards lighter wrestlers and encourage them to cheer their beloved underdog to victory.
This strategy assumes particular importance given that youngsters find K-1 techniques infinitely more attractive than sumo kimarite. “Sumo wins are less impressive,” said the 17-year old Fumiko, to nods from her three friends. Furthermore, some shinjinrui find sumo custom so unbearably restrictive that they better enjoy sumo when its rules are broken! Several interviewees, although reluctant to openly condone yokozuna Asashoryu’s infamous groping of Kyokushuzan’s hair, still found the incident more entertaining than a legal sumo kimarite. Of course, new kimarite terms are occasionally added to the sumo glossary – the last such occasion being in March 2001 – but these terms are introduced retrospectively, and only serve to explain existing sumo phenomena rather than invite sumotori to perform new, and radically different, moves. Shinjinrui will never be won over by sumo techniques alone. It is the context in which kimarite are used – preferably by Little on Large – that will arouse their enthusiasm.
Bad timing?
The timing of matches renders sumo even less attractive to the shinjinrui. The sumo expert Liliane Fujimori captures my sentiments entirely: “In the West, we often find ourselves asking how it is that certain persons can permit themselves to… watch sumo… for fifteen consecutive days from morning to evening! It is not only the wealthy and the retired who should be entitled to this privilege.”
The majority of shinjinrui interviewed favoured my suggestion that the midweek top division matches be moved to the evening, say 7.30pm, to allow for younger people to view them after work. Football, baseball and K-1 promoters would not dream of staging midweek matches in the afternoon (unless during the World Cup), so why should sumo? Furthermore, with the makunouchi schedule lasting but two and a quarter hours, its separation from the lower divisions would present youngsters with a spectacle of similar length to a football match, and thus more in keeping with their sports-related attention spans. Clearly, the NSK might be hard pressed to adjust working patterns and meal times, and the tsukebito would probably lose yet more sleep, but it should be stressed that makunouchi sumotori successfully stage evening performances when touring abroad. However, some young Japanese are adamant that the timing of torikumi matters precious little. “Showing sumo at a different time makes no difference,” said one of them. “It is just not exciting enough. There is too much shikiri-naoshi (preparing for the bout).”
Somnolent shikiri-naoshi?
Among the shinjinrui, a firm conviction exists that sumo torikumi which last a mere few seconds simply do not warrant a four-minute build-up. To the unconverted, sumo’s shikiri-naoshi appears considerably less eventful than the prologues of K-1 fights, which contain verbal insults galore and even the odd face-mask. The shikiri-naoshi irks youngsters considerably. It is underpinned by a religion which they barely understand, let alone believe in, and appears moderated by a high degree of emotional restraint which is more likely to remind them of a strict, conformist upbringing than the unadulterated fun they share with friends. The question is therefore begged: would a one-minute shikiri-naoshi make youngsters more inclined to watch sumo?
I am yet to discover another proposition capable of provoking shinjinrui into such violent laughter. “It could work,” was the assessment of Yu, a Tokyo language student, upon controlling her giggling, “but wrestlers need time to concentrate and create an atmosphere.” Kentaro, another language student, chuckled: “We can’t have a one-minute shikiri-naoshi. It is important for the wrestlers to put on a performance.” Kentaro did not mean that it was “important” for himself, though. Like Yu, he firmly believed that the older generation had a right to enjoy their shikiri-naoshi, and that this right should not be impinged upon by shinjinrui. Of course, the notion that outsiders are not really supposed to influence insiders has been rife throughout Japan for centuries. But 21st-century sumo should view this notion with trepidation. Kentaro, Yu and many of their contemporaries often imply that their enjoyment of sumo can only be increased if the enjoyment of older people is compromised, and that they would rather resign themselves to disliking sumo rather than risk antagonising their elders. Sumo will never recruit hoards of youthful admirers while this perception exists.
Rather, sumo must stress to shinjinrui that their interests are not diametrically opposed to those of older fans, and must assert that the shikiri-naoshi offers something for everyone. Whereas older fans simply appreciate every aspect of it, young people should be particularly fascinated by the expressions on wrestlers’ faces as they size each other up. The older generation may detest Asashoryu’s scowling looks in his pre-match build-up, but younger fans find them both intriguing and amusing. They should coo when wrestlers venomously slap their own bodies and become curious as to how effectively the power behind such slaps can be deployed on the opponent. They should be anxious to know what each wrestler would like to say to the other, were they permitted a K-1 style press conference. In short, the religious aspect of the shikiri-naoshi should be downplayed to shinjinrui, in favour of highlighting the gripping tension and scintillating mental warfare on display. Under no circumstances should the shikiri-naoshi be shortened. Older fans already react angrily when the NHK broadcast substitutes shikiri-naoshi coverage with special features and interviews.
In the West, though, sumo must tailor its rituals to the type of audience it wishes to attract. It if seeks approval from those intrigued by all things far-Eastern, a four-minute shikiri-naoshi is perfect. If, on the other hand, it seeks to win over those who are purely interested in combat, a shorter build-up is strongly advised. The full-length shikiri-naoshi worked beautifully in front of 11,000 UK fans at the Royal Albert Hall, most of whom were acquainted with it through Channel Four’s sumo broadcasts. It also impressed the majority of supporters at Grand Sumo Las Vegas in 2005. Conversely, when America’s World Wrestling Entertainment ambitiously attempted to stage a sumo bout involving Akebono in front of 20,000 pro-wrestling fans craving for choke-slams and suplexes, even one-minute of salt-tossing was met with derision. However, a similarly-minded audience which gathered to witness the 2006 US Sumo Open was suitably placated by the fact that amateur sumo requires combatants merely to bend their knees and clap once before wrestling. As long as some element of the build-up remains – even if just a tantalising glimpse – sumo can simultaneously respect tradition while outreaching to fans from pastures new.
K-1 competition
The task of re-endearing sumo to young people was made decidedly more difficult by the events of 31st December 2003. On that New Year’s Eve, around half of Japan saw a former yokozuna, Akebono Taro, bludgeoned to defeat by Bob Sapp in a K-1 fight.
It is impossible to underestimate the impact of Akebono’s painful pounding on Japan’s impressionable shinjinrui. Sapp had become a cult figure in their eyes after transferring his outgoing personality to a series of TV commercials. He was seen to represent the forces of modernisation, whereas Akebono’s sumo history aligned him with the forces of tradition. The shinjinrui not only saw modernisation win, but also saw a rather average K-1 fighter defeat a yokozuna, sumo’s symbol of invincibility. Their suspicions of sumotori no longer being the toughest warriors in Japan were spectacularly reinforced, while the yokozuna dohyo-iri – designed to portray the yokozuna as sheer magnificence personified – was in danger of appearing little more than bravado.
Kenji, the chunky teenager from Tokyo, spoke for many peers when saying: “I don’t like Akebono as a fighter. He is just heavy. Not strong. No technique either.” Other teenagers simply laugh whenever the words “Akebono” and “K-1” inhabit the same sentence. Michiko, the midwife from Toyama, sympathetically tried to defend the rank of yokozuna in the light of Akebono’s thrashing. “A yokozuna is just… God!” she exclaimed. “[But] you watched the K-1 fight and he was not a yokozuna. I can’t respect that.”
Her implication was that had Akebono – or indeed any great yokozuna – fought Bob Sapp like a yokozuna, he would have won. It is true that Akebono faced Sapp while being considerably short of peak condition. Unfortunately for Michiko’s sentiments, though, a much fitter Akebono has since fought eight K-1 fights and has only triumphed in one of them. In his brave quest to become the first yokozuna to test his skills against – and prove his superiority over – martial artists from other disciplines, he has instead cruelly exposed sumo’s limitations. As sumo prohibits closed fists, sumotori are unable to practice absorbing punches to the head, and this places them at an immediate disadvantage in the K-1 ring. Whenever a sumotori sheds blood and collapses due to a punch (and Akebono is not the only ex-rikishi to have suffered this fate in K-1), the stereotypical shinjinrui conceptions of elegant, muscled K-1 athletes versus doddery, obese sumo wrestlers receive an emphatic stamp of validation.
To allay such (mis)conceptions, the NSK should embrace the following strategy. It must simply highlight the years of training that sumotori must undergo before they become exceptional makunouchi warriors. It must then remind shinjinrui that it also takes years of dedication for K-1 fighters to truly master their mixed-martial art. It must discretely explain away Akebono’s defeat by stressing that nobody who suddenly switches a martial art can expect to train for a mere few weeks and then defeat an experienced opponent. Crucially, it must then stress that the disadvantages faced by Akebono in K-1 would be mirrored by those facing by Bob Sapp were he to suddenly become a sumo-ist. Ironically enough, Sapp did quip before his match with Akebono that “we could do it sumo rules”. Had the former yokozuna held him to his word, he would surely have altered a few shinjinrui perceptions of sumotori. Perhaps the NSK should call Sapp’s bluff and offer a place in a heya to any K-1 fighter who is willing. Sumo would certainly generate additional interest in the unlikely event that a K-1 athlete would accept the offer.
This is but an introduction to S.O.S. In the next issue of SFM, we spotlight the unease with which young Japanese view sumo personalities, and examine whether more youngsters would feel inclined to watch sumo if it produced a Japanese Yokozuna, offered women a more prominent role, or permitted sumotori to show more emotion.
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