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Sumo a Pocket Guide. David Shapiro
Читать онлайн.Название Sumo a Pocket Guide
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781462904846
Автор произведения David Shapiro
Издательство Ingram
After his retirement, Rikidozan shocked the sumo world by going into professional wrestling. Although Japanese professional wrestling at me time was filled with former rikishi who never made it to the top two divisions, Rikidozan was the first former top division star to join the "grunt-and-groan circuit." He became quite popular and successful, however, and later retired to manage a number of nightclubs. He died tragically in 1963, stabbed to death by a gangster outside one of his clubs.
As Japan became more prosperous and international in its outlook, the world of sumo also opened up a bit. Koreans, Chinese, Brazilians, Tongans, and mainland Americans have all tried their hand at it. Most have given up and returned home, not due to any overt discrimination but simply because, as we shall see, the life of a novice wrestler is difficult for many to cope with. Some foreigners have achieved outstanding success, however, with a string of four Hawaiians taking turns rewriting the pages of sumo history.
The first of this quartet went by the ring name of Takamiyama. Today as a stable master, he goes by the name Azumazeki, and is better known as the man who coached another Hawaiian, Akebono, to sumo's highest rank. In his heyday, however, he was a real trailblazer, and it is safe to say that the recent successes of the Hawaiian contingent would have been a lot more difficult to achieve without him.
Born Jesse James Walani Kuhaulua, Jesse, as he is still popularly known, entered sumo in 1964 at the age of nineteen. Four years later he was fighting in sumo's top division, and four years after that he became the first foreigner ever to win a top division championship. During the awards presentation following his victory, the American ambassador to Japan read a congratulatory telegram from President Richard Nixon. An amiable bear of a man, Jesse was one of the most popular rikishi of his day.
This accomplishment in and of itself would have been enough to guarantee the former sekiwake (sumo's third highest rank) an important place in sumo history, but Jesse was also one of the true "iron men" of his sport, spending twenty years in sumo. His amazing durability resulted in several records: for the most tournaments in the top division, ninety-seven; for the most career bouts in the top division, 1,430; and the most consecutive appearances in the top division, 1,231. He is also ranked fourth on the list for top-division victories, with 683. What makes this achievement all the more impressive is the fact that the three rikishi ranked ahead of him are considered to be three of the greatest yokozuna, or "grand champions," who have ever lived. Jesse became a Japanese citizen in 1980 and opened his own stable two years after his retirement in 1984.
The second in this Hawaiian group, Konishiki, was recruited by Jesse for his old stable, Takasago, and entered professional sumo in 1982. He raced up the ranks in lramatic fashion, reaching the top division in 1984. Three years later, after the 1987 May Grand Sumo Tournament, Konishiki was promoted to sumo's second highest rank, ozeki, becoming the first foreigner to gain this honor. He successfully defended the rank for thirty-nine consecutive tournaments, taking third place on the all-time list in this category. During that period, he won the top division title three times. He also has the dubious honor of being the heaviest man in sumo history, weighing a whopping 269 kilograms (591 pounds).
The third and fourth Hawaiian-born rikishi, Akebono and Musashimaru, have put themselves in the position of leading professional sumo into the twenty-first century. When Akebono, or Chad Rowan, entered the professional ranks in 1988, most of the experts felt that although his size was impressive, his hips were much too high for him to achieve any kind of success in the sport. He proved the experts wrong, and in January of 1993, after winning two consecutive top-division titles ranked at ozeki, was promoted to become the sixty-fourth yokozuna, marking the first time a foreigner would hold sumo's highest rank. To date he has won seven top-division championships and, following successful arthroscopic surgery on both knees, is expected to playa dominant role in sumo for many years to come.
Musashimaru, like his three fellow Hawaiians, has also been working hard to rewrite the record books. In the six years since his professional debut in September 1989, he has gotten as far as ozeki, winning his first top-division title in July 1994 with a perfect 15-0 record, only one of fifteen men to achieve this feat in the modern era.
From wherever they hail, aspiring rikishi must be of a minimum height and weight. These standards have been raised gradually over the years, as improvement in the Japanese diet has produced successively taller and more massive competitors. Today, young men who desire to join sumo must stand at least 1.73 meters (five feet eight inches) and weigh at least seventy-five kilograms (165 pounds).
Considering the size of the top-ranked rikishi, these standards seem very minimum indeed. For even taking into account legendary giants, the biggest men in sumo history are those wrestling today, with the top-division average weight now 157 kilograms (346 pounds). Obviously, then, most of the rikishi's bulk results from the diet and training regimen that he undertakes after entering sumo. These and other aspects of the newcomer's long and difficult struggle to the top are the subjects of Chapters 3 and 4.
CHAPTER 3
The Long Climb
A new recruit enters sumo by becoming affiliated with a training facility called a hey a, a term commonly translated as "stable." Many heya are located near Tokyo's Ryogoku Station on the JR Sobu Line, for it was in this area that the first national sumo stadium, the Kokugikan, was constructed in 1909. There are about a dozen heya clustered around the newest Kokugikan, which opened in 1985 in the same vicinity, and almost fifty altogether (a list of heya addresses and phone numbers appears on pages 95-99). Most heya are relatively simple structures; ordinary wood-frame or concrete houses, each containing little more than a ring, a communal eatery, and some rather spartan living quarters. In keeping with Japan's overall prosperity though, there is a trend today toward building more impressive structures, with a sophisticated weight-training room being the most common addition.
The young hopeful must pass a physical examination, held six times a year (before each of the major tournaments), and must present the required documents (proof of junior high school graduation, parental consent, and a copy of the family register). He is then formally enrolled as an apprentice and is guaranteed nothing more than a roof, three square meals, long hours of hard work, and a chance at stardom. The newcomer might be a strapping farm boy or fisherman's son with little training in the sport, or a veteran college wrestler. But in any case, he has a long and difficult climb ahead of him.
These stables house a total of over 850 rikishi and all are competing in the struggle upward through a rigid system of ranks. Ascending through the sumo hierarchy is somewhat like climbing a mountain. Progress can be rather quick and painless at its broad-based entry level, but it becomes progressively more difficult as one approaches the steep and slippery summit. As a matter of fact, the word nobori, "to climb," is a popular suffix for a rikishi's ring name; it gives notice of his intention to climb to the summit of the sumo world.
There are six major divisions in sumo. These are best considered as forming a figurative mountain divided into two main groups. Its base is subdivided into four groups and its summit consists of two groups, with a wide disparity in the prestige and privileges accorded members of the bottom four and the top two. The four lower divisions are (from the bottom up): the Jonokuchi division, with about one hundred rikishi; the Jonidan division, with about three hundred; the Sandanme division, with about two hundred; and the Makushita division, fixed at 120 rikishi. Although the numbers in the divisions below Makushita vary, a little arithmetic reveals that this leaves only sixty-odd slots in the top two divisions—a precipitous summit indeed.