Bulk, Violence and a Loincloth : Sumo’s Culture Shock No Bar to Foreigners

Foreign lawyers are still barred from practicing in Japan. The first foreign securities companies were selected for membership in the Tokyo Stock Exchange only a week or so ago. Even foreign horses were not allowed to race here until 1971.

But in the world of sumo wrestling--a separate culture with its own centuries-old way of life in a country that itself is often criticized as a closed society--a degree of internationalization is occurring.

The sport, which is linked to the Shinto religion, was once promoted by emperors and feudal warriors and is widely considered to be the “essence” of Japan, now includes 10 active foreign wrestlers, the largest number ever.

The first foreigner entered the sport in 1934 and, since then, 45 have won admittance. In the last two years, two Americans, a Paraguayan and a Canadian have joined. One American and a Chinese from Taiwan now wrestle in the top two divisions. And there is even talk, and some fear, that one of them might become a yokozuna (grand champion).

On U.S. Television

Sumo now shows up occasionally on American television, and the popularity of the sport among foreigners in Japan, particularly U.S. military personnel, has soared.

Unlike the government of Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, which has declared that it wants to generally promote “internationalization”--meaning opening doors to outsiders--the Japan Sumo Assn., a cartel that still operates on feudal-like principles, found itself attracting foreigners largely because of an oversight.

“Sumo never had a rule banning foreigners from participating--but that was because the sumo association never thought any foreigner would want to, or could, adjust to the world of sumo,” said Takeo Nagashima, a reporter for the Yomiuri newspaper who has covered sumo for nine years.

“It was simply inconceivable,” he added, “that any foreigner would be willing to bare his body with nothing to cover himself but the mawashi (a loincloth tucked between the legs and attached to a six-inch-wide sash wrapped around the waist).”

Internationalization has added a new element of interest for many Japanese fans but has also caused some problems. Foreigners’ victories occasionally trigger xenophobic reactions, and a few critics charge that foreigners are “contaminating” the sport.

‘Ready-Made’ Giants

“Some people criticize the stable (training house) masters for importing ‘ready-made’ giants, rather than going through the long and tedious process of nurturing home-grown talent into top-flight wrestlers,” said Andy Adams, the American editor and publisher of Sumo World magazine. But the president of the sumo association heads a stable that has been among the “importers,” Adams added, so no one has raised such criticism publicly.

One official of the association, who asked not to be identified, said: “The sumo association never intended to internationalize sumo. There are some (individual stable masters) out there who are interested in bringing foreign wrestlers in, but it is not the sumo association.” The official said the association also is not much in favor of sending groups of sumo wrestlers overseas, despite the praise they have won as “naked ambassadors” of Japanese culture in four official tours to date.

An exhibition in New York last June and a planned mission to Paris next year were arranged, the official said, because “those cities are sister cities of Tokyo. It wasn’t our idea to go abroad. We went only because of persistent requests from the Tokyo metropolitan government.”

Sumo, whose matches are fought in a circular earthen ring 14 feet, 10 inches in diameter beneath a Shinto shrine roof, is a sport long on ritual and short on action.

Pre-Fight Ritual

Before each of the bouts that take place every day during the 15-day senior division tournaments, the two opponents go through a prescribed ceremony of leg-stamping, salt-throwing, and glaring at each other. This takes three minutes.

Then the two wrestlers rush at each other, and nearly 80% of the matches end in seconds during these initial charges. A wrestler wins by forcing any part of the body of his opponent, other than the feet, to touch the ground, or by forcing any part, or all, of the opponent’s body out of the ring.

“That’s what makes it so exciting,” Adams said. “The audience can see who won and why. Unlike Greco-Roman wrestling or judo, you don’t have to wait for some referee to score points for a maneuver you don’t understand.”

Japanese, who like to believe they are unique among the world’s peoples and that they can be understood only by other Japanese, find in the ritual of sumo and its roots in mythology dating back to 23 BC an affirmation of the singularity of their country’s customs and way of thinking. Most Japanese do not believe that foreigners can even be interested in sumo, much less understand or participate in it.

Adams, who has been writing about sumo for 24 years, said he is still asked by Japanese wrestlers and journalists why foreigners like sumo.

70 Basic Techniques

Many of the foreign wrestlers, in fact, barely knew what sumo was when they came to Japan and knew nothing of its 70 basic techniques, all of which have names. They include arm, leg, hand, and hip throws as well as pushing, pulling, tripping, slapping, thrusting and lifting tactics.

If fighting virtually naked on nationwide television is not enough to turn off most foreigners, sumo also forces on its athletes a diet and training program that produces bodies weighing, on average, more than 300 pounds--”soft on the outside, hard on the inside,” according to Adams. “If a wrestler gets too muscular, he loses his flexibility,” he added.

The flabby appearance disguises tremendous strength, much of which appears to be centered in abdomens that have been likened to “wet cement.”

Unlike Americans in Japanese baseball, whose salaries often start at more than $200,000 a year, life for a foreigner in the rigidly hierarchical sumo system begins with a demeaning apprenticeship for which he receives no pay. He is also given a traditional one-word professional name and is no longer known by his own name.

Rigorous Apprenticeship

Apprentices roll out of their futon cushion beds before dawn each day to serve as attendants to wrestlers senior to them in one of the 38 “stables” that serve as surrogate families to the wrestlers. All wrestlers, except those who are married, live at the stable.

The apprentice bathes the senior, scrubs his back, massages him, prepares his food and serves it, runs his errands, does his shopping, washes his laundry, and makes up and puts away his futon. The apprentice also wipes the sweat and grime off the wrestler’s body during practice sessions and helps him put on and take off his loin cloth.

Training lasts until nearly noon and then the apprentices eat their first meal of the day. And at every meal, they eat last, picking through the leftovers of chanko-nabe, a stew of chicken meat, fish with the bones left in and vegetables mixed in a rich soy and sugar sauce. It is eaten with great quantities of rice.

It is a brew that Jesse Kuhaulua, who was the 10th foreigner to enter the sport but the first not of Japanese ancestry, found so unpalatable at first that he gagged over it. Beer is part of the sumo diet, too, and Kuhaulua apparently had less trouble with that, recalling that he once drank 36 large bottles during a dinner.

Toughened by Sticks, Salt

An American from Hawaii, Kuhaulua had a 20-year sumo career beginning in 1964 and was known affectionately as Jesse by both Japanese and foreign fans even though he had to use the professional sumo name of Takamiyama.

Training includes drills that leave the hands and feet bruised and sometimes bleeding. Also important are exercises in which the wrestler stretches his legs apart and bends forward until his forehead touches the ground. Those who cannot get all the way down are pushed to the ground by trainers. Many wrestlers shed tears from the pain.

Practice sessions sometimes continue until a wrestler collapses. If he does collapse, seniors rub salt into his eyes, stuff dirt into his mouth or hit him with a bamboo stick across the back or buttocks.

The routine continues every day of the year except for six weeks when the wrestlers are given time off--one week after each of six annual tournaments.

Japanese themselves drop out of the sport in droves. Nagashima said more than a third of the Japanese sumo apprentices quit within two years. For the foreigner, there is the additional problem of language.

American Gave Up

Philip Smoak, of San Antonio, became enamored of sumo while living in Japan as a child with his parents on a U.S. military base, but fled within five months of his entry into the sport in 1981.

Adams reported that Smoak, then 19, called his mother nearly every night during his apprenticeship and complained about the food, about the training, about not being able to communicate and about not being able to control his temper when senior apprentices started pushing him around.

Takamiyama--the former Jesse Kuhaulua--confessed to great misgivings in his early days. “When I first came to the stable, the place looked like a prison,” he recalled.

No exceptions are made to the rules, regardless of circumstances. Two sumo wrestlers--one Japanese and one foreigner--who otherwise satisfied all requirements were forced to quit the sport when they could not grow hair long enough to be set in the traditional mage samurai-like topknot that a sumo wrestler wears until his retirement.

Recently, the sumo association cracked down on wrestlers and coaches appearing in commercials and performing as entertainers. Now, prior approval is required for either activity.

‘Beauty and Decorum’

One retired wrestler, Masuiyama, a coach who had recorded 14 popular songs and was earning up to $15,000 a night for performing in cabarets, found his side career abruptly ended. Without complaining, he quickly announced he would give up his singing.

“A sense of beauty and decorum is very important to sumo,” Nagashima explained.

There are more than 900 active sumo wrestlers, but apprentices have only a small chance of making it into the ranks of the top two divisions--in which they are finally recognized as full-fledged wrestlers. Only 36 wrestlers fight in the top makunouchi division; 26 others compete in the second-level juryo division.

Not until they reach the juryo level do they start receiving salaries and perquisites, one of which is the assignment of apprentices to serve them.

Were it not for the example of Takamiyama, there probably would be few, or no, foreigners in the sport today.

His success--both in the dohyo (ring) and in Japanese society--provided much of the inspiration to the foreigners who have followed him. It also forced upon stable masters the realization that foreigners could overcome sumo’s multitude of cultural and physical obstacles.

Message From Nixon

Takamiyama, 41, who retired last year, holds a host of records for sumo longevity. Although he never rose to the rank of grand champion, sumo’s pinnacle, he became, in July, 1972, the only foreigner ever to win a tournament. President Richard M. Nixon sent him a message of congratulations, which then-Ambassador Robert S. Ingersoll read to him during the victory ceremony.

It was the only time the English language had been used during a sumo ceremony and that, in the view of the Nikkan Sports newspaper, made the Japanese national anthem at the end of the ceremony “sound sad and miserable.”

Adams and Mark Schilling, in “Jesse! Sumo Superstar,” a book they co-authored about Takamiyama, said the Hawaiian wrestler’s stable master had warned him early in his career that “Japanese hate to lose to foreigners. Maybe you don’t understand that now but someday you will. Everyone will come at you with a different look in their eyes.”

On the last day of the July, 1972, tournament, when Takamiyama had a 12-2 record and needed only to win his final bout to clinch victory, fans shouted their support for his opponent. Newspapers published headlines like “The National Sport Is in Danger!”

The president of the sumo association at the time, Yoshihide Musashigawa, confessed that he had “an unsettling feeling” because an American won the tournament. He added, however, that the blow was not as great as that administered by Anton Geesink, the Netherlander who stunned Japanese by winning the gold medal in the open division of judo, a sport once exclusively Japanese, in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo.

Personality Won Japanese

Takamiyama, at least, Musashigawa reasoned, “was trained in Japan by the hands of Japanese” while Geesink had learned much of his judo in the Netherlands.

And Takamiyama’s amiable personality and sense of humor, which Adams says never changed over the years, eventually won the hearts of Japanese fans. Nagashima added that the Hawaiian’s open displays of both joy and sorrow--despite the fact that sumo’s (and Japan’s) traditions dictate that wrestlers (as well as men, in general) show no emotion--endeared him to the fans.

Nagashima said Takamiyama’s statement that “sweat came from my eyes” after winning the tournament in July, 1972, became famous among Japanese. “He is a very charming person,” Nagashima said.

So charming, in fact, that during his waning days in sumo, Takamiyama found a new career appearing in television commercials. In 1977--weighing about 350 pounds--he tap-danced to Dixieland music in one commercial, which won an award, and later appeared in many others. He became a millionaire and now owns a Tokyo home worth more than $500,000.

Thanks largely to his example, five stable masters, including Kiyotaka Kasugano, president of the Japan Sumo Assn., are now sponsoring foreign wrestlers. Kasugano has said he expects the number to increase.

Quarter-Ton Wrestler

The newcomers include sumo’s first quarter-ton wrestler, the mammoth Salevaa (Sally) Fuauli Atisonoe, 21, a Samoan ex-high school football star from Honolulu.

In May, 1982, when Takamiyama brought him to Japan for the Takasago stable, Atisonoe, whose professional sumo name is Konishiki, weighed 408 pounds. But during last month’s Kyushu tournament, the 6-foot-1-inch Samoan weighed in at 506 pounds, the heaviest in the recorded history of sumo.

Konishiki won his third “Fighting Spirit Prize” and finished fourth with an 11-4 mark. He defeated one of the two runners-up on the last day to hand the championship to Grand Champion Chiyonofuji, 30, who, at 270 pounds, is one of the few wrestlers who does not appear flabby.

Some sumo critics are saying already that Konishiki has a chance to become the first foreign grand champion--if his great weight does not make him susceptible to injury.

Also attracting attention last month was 6-foot-6-inch, 422-pound John A. Tenta, 22, the 1983 world junior amateur super-heavyweight champion. A Canadian, he is one of only seven Caucasians who have ever entered the sport.

When he won his professional debut bout Nov. 13 in a usually ignored pre-sumo “tryout” in which wrestlers are not ranked, he told Japanese reporters that he “was nervous because it was my first fight.” But, apparently referring to the 169-pound weight advantage he had over his opponent, he added, “I was not worried.”

Canadian Promising

With victories in all three of his tryout matches, the gigantic Canadian is expected to win a ranking in the lowest of the six sumo divisions for the next tournament in January.

Because of such success, the foreign invasion periodically stirs nationalistic resentment.

In the fall of 1984, when Konishiki, the Samoan, defeated two grand champions and threatened to win the tournament, the sumo association was widely suspected of stacking the schedule, which is made up daily, to favor the Japanese wrestler who eventually won the title.

Critics contended that Konishiki was “too big” and that a weight restriction should be applied. Newspapers labeled him “a monster.”

He also has incurred the wrath of sumo purists by declaring that sumo is like a “brawl,” and has alienated other fans by saying that he does not intend to assume Japanese nationality or devote the rest of his life to sumo.

Some critics have suggested that he needs to learn sumo etiquette and decorum.

“Foreign wrestlers, like . . . Konishiki, lack the dignity of sumo,” said Naruo Morita, a novelist. “I just don’t think sumo needs internationalization. If a foreigner ever becomes a yokozuna (grand champion), that will be the end of the history of sumo.”

Changes Come Gradually

Although sumo itself, along with Japan, is changing gradually, it has been less changed by contact with foreigners than the foreigners have been by their dedication to sumo.

Nowadays, the stables and the sumo arena--though not the practice rings--are heated and air-conditioned, unlike the conditions when Kuhaulua entered the sport.

Young wrestlers are less apt to tolerate the more brutal forms of training and have been known to shout, “You idiot!” at their stable masters and walk out of the sport for good--unthinkable acts just a decade or so ago.

“The younger wrestlers can’t eat fish bones and don’t like chanko-nabe,” the Yomiuri’s Nagashima said. “Frequently, they leave the stew uneaten and go out for hamburgers or spaghetti.”

After Takamiyama startled purists by wearing brilliant orange-colored sashes and loincloths instead of the traditional black, other wrestlers began to wear mawashi of varied colors. But except for that, Nagashima said, “there has been no change at all in sumo because of foreigners participating.”

When Takamiyama gained the qualifications in the ring needed to become an oyagata (an owner of stock in the Japan Sumo Assn.), the association in 1976 stipulated for the first time that only Japanese citizens could become oyagata.

Even his own stable master voted to require Japanese citizenship, Adams said.

Changed His Nationality

After agonizing for years--and consulting U.S. Ambassador Mike Mansfield and other American friends--Takamiyama changed his nationality and his name (to Daigoro Watanabe) in 1980.

He is now a coach in the Takasago stable and intends, he says, to serve as sumo’s “foreign minister” and introduce foreigners to the sport. After his defeat in his 1,231st--and last--bout in the senior division last year, he summed up his career as a wrestler with his usual modesty:

“Today was the hardest I’ve ever lived through but I’m happy I could do sumo for 20 years. I think it’s something to be proud of.”

In 1972, the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii, in naming him its first recipient of an award for intercultural activity, cited his “unusual degree of sensitivity, dedication and common humanity which transcends cultural barriers.”

Even before he assumed Japanese citizenship, according to Adams, he had “become more Japanese than a lot of Japanese.”

But sumo, except for a few superficialities, goes on unchanged.