Sumo (相撲) is Japan's national sport and its oldest, with roots in Shinto ritual rather than in athletics. Two wrestlers face each other in a circular clay ring, and the rules are almost comically simple: force your opponent out of the ring, or make any part of him other than the soles of his feet touch the ground.
More ritual than fight
A bout usually lasts a few seconds. Everything around it takes much longer. Wrestlers throw salt onto the ring to purify it, stamp their feet to drive out bad spirits, and crouch and rise several times before the referee lets them start. The ring itself, the dohyō, is built fresh of packed clay for each tournament and blessed beforehand; a roof shaped like a shrine hangs over it. Women are still not permitted to enter the ring, a rule the sport defends as ritual purity and its critics call plain exclusion.
A life, not a job
Wrestlers live in training stables called heya, usually from their teens, under a system that governs almost everything: what they eat, when they sleep, what they wear in public, even how they do their hair. Juniors cook, clean, and serve the seniors. Rank decides everything, and it is recalculated after every one of the six annual tournaments, so a wrestler can climb or fall fast. The top rank, yokozuna, is the only one that can never be lost by losing: a yokozuna who stops winning is expected to retire instead.
Words & idioms to take away
Idioms & proverbs to carry away
-
土俵 (dohyō): the raised clay ring, rebuilt for every tournament and treated as sacred ground rather than as sports equipment.
-
横綱 (yokozuna): the highest rank, named after the thick woven rope worn at the waist, the same kind of rope that marks sacred objects at a shrine.