Too Much Lore: Sumo
We bring back a classic series: Too Much Lore! Where we do a deep dive on the lore of a thing that has, arguably, to gosh darn much of it. This week, Josh tells us all about the long, weird, intriguing world of Sumo... And we tell you about our new show!
Join Josh and Kris on No Plot, Only Lore as they dive into the surprising world of professional Sumo—a sport Josh argues is the "purest representation" of physical will. This episode explores how Sumo transcends being a mere sport, functioning as a 2,000-year-old Shinto ritual deeply rooted in Japanese history and samurai culture.
We break down the unique "stable" lifestyle where wrestlers live communally under a "stable master" who acts as a father figure. Discover the intricate traditions that define the life of a rikishi, from the ranking of hair stylists and the symbolic cutting of top knots to the burial of sacred items like salt and dried squid in the ring. Whether you're interested in the "crunchy math" of sports statistics or the "beauty of tradition," this episode unpacks the fascinating intersection of modern capitalism and ancient service.
Key Topics Covered:
The Shinto Origins: How Sumo matches served as harvest rituals and the mythology of the first divine matches.
The Life of a Wrestler: Insights into the unpaid lower divisions, communal living, and the "discomfort" of traditional service.
Rituals & Rules: The significance of the Yokozuna’s rope, the construction of the dohyo, and the strict bans on hair-pulling and punching.
Historical Evolution: Transitioning from the "kicking people to death" era to a formalized courtly entertainment and military training for samurai.
TRANSCRIPT
You're listening to No Plot Only Lore, a podcast about games and the tables we play them at. Your DMs tonight and every
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back to No Claw Only Lore. This week brought to you by Weeaboos.
We here at No Plot Only Lore often
made fun of me. No, I'm saying we have made fun of me. Okay. For having a particular
fascination with Japanese culture, specifically anime, right? And uh today we're going to be talking
about Josh's obsession, which obviously has nothing to do with Japan, even a little bit. Uh, I'd like to start by
saying it's not an obsession. I just really really like it and don't intend to stop. Uh,
no. Uh, uh, so being, uh, being nerds, we're not
usually sports people. Uh, but I
somewhat have bucked that trend. I played a lot of sports as a kid. Um, I played rugby and football for years,
used to wrestle, etc. and still occasionally enjoy following sports because it has something that does
appeal to nerds, which is plot lines. Uh, and I thought you were going to say numbers.
Yeah, there's there's math, too. The the thing that I always hear about baseball, right, like the reason that
baseball is so popular among nerds is because there's there's so much of the crunchy math that you can do on all the
probabilities and statistics and everybody has like every tiny thing accounted for and it's basically like
you have a character sheet for your hitter. Yeah. I mean, you can Okay, here's the
thing that I feel about like sports statistics, which is usually just
baseball, is that most of the time it's just BS. Um, it doesn't indicate a lot
more other than this guy is more often to hit the ball than the other guy. Um,
but they go into some deep bizarre calculations on new statistics they make
up every year that I think are stupid. Um, so the thing that I find really fascinating
about it is that like and I'm I'm not a I'm not a baseball guy. Um, I think I'm
on record here having said that I do not sports ball. Yeah. I don't understand sports. I have never
followed a sport. I will sometimes watch hockey during the playoffs if a Canadian team is in the playoffs
and that is it. That is my entire sports world. So like the thing that I find fascinating about baseball is that it's
treated like especially the the statistics part of it is treated as though it is um prescriptive,
right? Like it's it's going to tell you what the future is, but all of it is looking backwards. Right. Right.
Right. So like it does what does somebody's previous stats mean when yeartoyear your ability may change and
like very small variations in things may create huge differences in some of those stat yeah like to me it just it it seems
like hulum well and that's that's the thing about baseball in particular that annoys me never mind like the construction of the
sport where like the defender controls the ball which I think invalidates it as a sport but um the the the beauty and
magic of sport in general which I think is was sort of uh persona or like best
sort of summed up in a phrasing from uh professional football which is the idea
that on any given Sunday you know hence the movie
any team can beat another team if if things go right and if the effort is
there no matter what happened in the past you can beat the other team right
um which again like invalidates the idea of like sports statistics having any
meaning other than just adding your own commentary to the past. Um I think
that's why I find there's there's a a writer who uh is at SP Nation named John Boyce who does a series uh a few
different series but uh they are often statistics based but he's not trying to predict the future. He's telling a story
of the past. Um, so he uses he's got a series called Chart Party where he makes
a bunch of cool bar, line, and graph charts and and shows interesting statistical anomalies from seasons or or
stories about franchises and their lack or abundance of success, things like
that. Um but he also has fun stupid games like score origami where he will
track uh unique sports unique football score outcomes over a graph of possible
uh scores in the history of the NFL. And I I find it very interesting that unique
scores are popping up still to this day after a 100 years of football. Um,
I feel like everything that you've just said is possibly the most boring thing I can imagine in
my entire life. I mean, if you like if you like numbers, he uses numbers to tell a story. And that's the interesting part is the
story. You know, he's he's done stories about weird things like the there was a marathon in
like the 1920s when it was just an absolute disaster. um including uh
competitors poisoning themselves with rat poison and uh one guy
Yep. Uh one guy who like took a like a break like an hourong nap or something
and still won the marathon like stuff like this. But but for me like when I watch sports
one the ones that I watch most often tied to the things that I used to do. I I understand the struggles and
decision-m that these guys are going through. Um, but it comes down to like
physical aspiration and I think some of the purest representation of that when
you distill it down to my like one one competitor's application of their physical will upon another the
best implementation of that or at least the the to my mind the purest is sumo
um combat sports in general but specifically sumo. So to my mind, sumo
is two very fat people slapping the [ __ ] out of each other
and then hugging for a bit until one of them falls down. Okay, am I wrong?
You're not entirely wrong. There are uh aspects of that that have
been more or less true throughout history. Um, but the core of sumo is two
men entering a ring until one of them No women, no women. Point of contention,
no women. Uh, women are allowed in amateur sumo, not professional sumo, which comes back
to the origins of sumo that I'll get to in a second here. But the idea being that two guys wearing minimal clothing
are struggling against each other until one of them is either forced to touch the ground with anything other than the
soles of his feet or forced out of a 15t wide circle. Um,
right. So, uh, generally speaking, why? So,
yeah, let me get to that in a second here. So, well, I was trying to invite you to do
your version of sumo like why why is this happening? Why are these two very large men slapping the [ __ ] out of each
other and then hugging until one of them So, let me let me give you a quick rundown of the actual
thing that is Sumo right now and then how we got here. So, right now, Sumo is
uh six tournaments a year for 15 days. Uh these two guys, the the the highest
level guys fight every day. The lower level guys who are unpaid fight uh seven times over the 15 days. Um
hold on. They're not getting paid. They are not getting paid. Uh only the top two divisions actually get a salary.
Now they the lower levels do get a stipen, you know, enough to cover things
like a cell phone and occasionally um some entertainment, you know, but
most of their expenses are covered by the uh the HEA or the the stable that
they belong to. So they all live communally. They practice daily. Their
food is covered by the stable. Uh and then sometimes things like um eating out
or or various day trips and adventures are either gifted by the the stable
master or by higher ranking wrestlers who do receive uh salaries.
Okay. By stable we are like purposefully drawing a like direct comparison to horses. Is
that Yes. On purpose? Okay. Yes. Um Okay. Yeah. The stable is the
the you know anglicized translation of ha I guess. Uh but the idea being that they are the origins of sumo
required a lot of uh patronage. Um just like the arts back in the days you would have a a highranking noble who became
your patron or would be the patron of your stable. So you'd have several guys
that were um kept around like any sort of artistic troop, you know, um because
sumo wasn't always a competitive sport. Um so these days,
talk to me about cooperative sumo. I want to know how cooperative sumo works. It was not when I say not competitive, I
mean it was much more ritualized uh and had a lot more to do with the origins of
sumo. So, uh, sumo springs out of, uh, Shinto harvest rituals. Um, the god of
sumo is, uh, Nomi no sukun. Uh, prior to
professional sumo sort of being established in the Tokugawa era, uh,
sumo was almost exclusively performed in shrines and temples. Uh, to Shinto, uh,
the there there is a roof that is over the dohillo that represents the sky. The dohoyo itself represents earth. Uh and
the canopy is styled just like a Shinto shrine. Uh the the guoji or judges
dressed like Shinto priests. Uh the head judge does a consecration ceremony of
the doho before every basho which by the way is completely demolished and rebuilt by the ring attendants every tournament.
Uh because it falls apart over the course of 15 days. I mean it it is it is
the traditional one is made from clay with uh straw bales around the outside
that are buried into the clay and it dries out and falls apart over the course of the tournament. Um but he buries uh four items, salt, kelp, dried
squid, and chestnuts in the center and then pours sake around the straw bales
uh as part of a purification ceremony. The the officials in attendance get to
drink the sake and then they spill the rest for the gods. If I dig those up, do
I get to take them home like an adventurer? If you dig those up, you'll get kicked out of Japan.
Yeah, they're they're buried in the center of the ring for uh I guess the idea is like
one, inviting the attention of the gods to watch what they're doing for their entertainment. And then two, to chase
away uh demons and evil spirits for the safety of the wrestlers. But you see that how that's a setup for
a heist. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like um actually that would be a fun adventure
now that I'm thinking about it. Like doing an adventure where you are stealing the like holy relics of a sumo
competition and then everybody that you're fighting is an enormous sumo wrestler.
Yeah. Which Yeah. Just a lot of e-hondas coming out there slapping the daylights out of your party.
Um so other Shinto parallels include uh the Yokazuna which uh literally means
uh horizontal rope. Uh they have there there's a a rope that gets placed across
like holy areas of Shinto shrines. Um, and the the
theory or the the story, the mythology behind it is that one of the early uh
champions like grabbed one of those ropes and tied it around himself essentially saying like I am the holy
place, you know, try to touch me. Um, and so now it, you know, you'll see it's
got those like lightning bolt kind of papers that are attached to it in along with, you know, that that directly
mirror other Shinto decorations. Um, and then the Yokazuna themselves do their
their dohoiri or their ring mounting ceremony at the start of every day as part of a purification ritual for that
uh that ring every single day. Um, so yeah, uh, I'm not going to go into
like the how the sport works so much in this episode because I feel like one
that's something I've already covered it. Yeah. I mean, there's there's there's some subtleties to it, but like the reality is the thing
that appealed to me initially about Sumo was that it was so simple. It's just like two guys in their underwear trying
to use their their physical will against the other one. Um, you know, yes, you
can slap people, you can't punch them, you now you can't kick them. Uh,
but, uh, yeah, you you just grab a guy day before you pointed out they can't pull hair, right? I noticed that
one of the top competitors had a big patch of back hair. That seemed like a disadvantage to me.
Yeah. No, you if if you So, the uh even like stylized hairstyles for all of the
wrestlers. If you pull on that top knot, you are also uh disqualified. So, it
really is just like you can grab that belt or you can grab that guy and figure
out how to push, pull, throw him. But speaking of the the ritualizing of
everything, right? like the the hairds that they do like that. I was doing some research
uh in the last couple of days where like people were doing hair cutting ceremonies for when they graduate from
the uh the doyo and they have like a big ceremony where like
people show up very nicely dressed. It's like a whole to-do about getting your haircut.
Yeah. So the idea is as soon as you join Sumo, you stop cutting your hair um and you let it grow. And it gets there's
there's a whole series of hair stylists that work for the uh the HAS and they
have their own ranking systems. Every everybody in Sumo has a rank. Your ring attendants have ranks. Your judges have
ranks. Your wrestlers have ranks. The hair guy has ranks. They have specific techniques that they're using to mimic
samurai hairstyles from earlier in history. Um and then once you reach the
top levels, they start styling your hair into a a little ginko leaf uh for for
luck. Um they do some things like they shave like the top of the head sometimes so that the hair will like lay flat and
things like that, but generally you don't cut your hair for the entirety of your length in sumo. um they'll trim it
and stuff like that, but once you retire, which is the ceremony that you'd be referencing, then you they will
symbolically cut off that top knot to, you know, show your exit from professional sumo. Um and it's it is a
big deal. I mean, when yokozunas retire, so first of all, they will sell like
tickets for people to come and make a snip out of the top knot. So they get So
you might have like literally hundreds of people coming up and taking a pair of scissors and doing one snip on your hair
and then like you just sit there for like two hours while people come up and make snips and then finally the last one
is done by your stable master. Um but they sell those for like thousands of dollars because the idea is you're
raising money to uh gift the sumo wrestler a a start in their their second
life. Um, but like celebrities, prime ministers, like all sorts of people will
sign up to to do that. One of the through lines that I've seen through everything that
I've been looking at for like and again I am a amateur at all of this. I have
watched I think a grand total of an hour of Sumo in my entire life and
30 minutes of that was yesterday. Yeah. Um, but like what what one of the
through lines that I'm seeing through like all of the the reading that I've been doing is it seems like the entire
sport is built on discomfort, right? Like everything about the way
that these uh wrestlers are living and expected to behave and expected to do things is incredibly uncomfortable. And
I'm not sure what that's about. I I don't know if I would say discomfort is the right word to use. Um so first of
all a lot of it is built on um tying into the old well not old but tying into
the the idea of bushidto code and samurai culture. Um this the sport is so deeply rooted in
Japanese history because of its ties to the origins of the Shinto religion. uh
the history of the samurai class and the um change in power uh over the history
of Japan from emperor focus to you know uh shogunut focus back to you know the
the uh emperor again and and modern democracy. Um,
and it all comes back to essentially like
sumo being a form of like service. Um,
because the idea is this sumo is not something that you do
necessarily for personal gain or personal glory. It's it's done as an act
like to the gods and to the emperor and
to you know other people in your life. Um, you'll see time and again stories
that come up as they interview wrestlers and and it's constantly talking about,
hey, I'm doing this because of, you know, the things that my old coaches did
for me and the ways that they helped me in my life. I mean, you know, a huge part of joining professional sumo and moving into these stables happens for um
very young men who, you know, the the minimum the requirements for sumo are only like a grade nine education. Like
they take 15 and 16 year olds into professional sumo and they start living
at the the HEA. And the deal essentially is that your new stable
master is your new dad. like this is your new parents and they are going to raise you and make sure that you are a
functioning member of society when you do leave sumo. So they have sumo school to make sure you're at least somewhat educated. Um, and
they are trying to make sure that like you have sort of a dignified life in
this service, which is why like the fact that they're not paid to a certain level
is not like it's not seen as like necessarily a bad thing. Like you your life is sumo
because that's a job that gets fulfilled in society. Like you need to have these these sumo wrestlers doing what they do.
Um, and it's it gets more trying to think of like a an equivalent, but like trash guys get paid.
Um, the the introduction of capitalism to
like society as a whole, but Japan specifically has been
well awful, but just an odd justosition to like a lot of things that are core to their culture. like the idea of like
finding the thing you do and then that's just the thing you do for the rest of your life. Like you know from an era
where people were able to be a lot more like I don't want to say like self-sufficient but you had more like sustenance level activity uh as part of
your daily life. So then the other things that you did didn't always have to make money while you were getting
good at them um because you were able to like keep yourself alive and feed yourself and like build a home and then
eventually interact. You could be be poor, but you wouldn't die, right? Because you still,
you know, had ways to take care of yourself, but money wasn't something that like you required all the time. Um,
so as long as you were paying your taxes and some samurai didn't run through town and burn it. Sure. Sure. But yeah, you know,
just what want to make sure that we're not like roast tinted glasses. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not saying I'm
not saying Japan is perfect in any way. like far from it. Um, but the way that
like capitalism interacts with sumo is really weird because sumo just like
it's from a different time in a lot of ways. I mean, and they really strongly
cling to that idea that this like the the the phrase that gets thrown on a lot of them is the beauty of tradition. you
know, this idea that like this is just how things are and it's it doesn't need to change or modernize because, you
know, you've lost sight of of what is important in life or things like that. Like, it's it's there's a lot of oddness
attached to the role and function of of traditionalism um in Japan as a whole
and and sumo in particular. Um, but uh I love K like as as a weeb and as a
person who does eventually want to move to Japan and as a person with very deeply held left-wing beliefs,
the idea of Japan as a liberal utopia is hilarious. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just like fi find me a more traditional, more uptight, more like manners forward,
more Yeah. like tradition focused culture. I'll wait.
Yeah. But it's and it's funny because like it feels like it Japan came to
similar conclusions of like leftwing ideas about like how to like collectivize and and take care of all
levels of society just from like completely the wrong angle. Like
Yeah. Because it they're not looking at it as like helping people is good. They're looking at helping people is
your duty. Yeah. It is a thing you do. Yeah. To to not help people is the is
wrong. Yeah. It's not that helping people. People are wrong and bad and we need to help them.
Yeah. It's our duty. Yeah. Helping people isn't good. Not helping people is bad. That's
Yeah. It's It's not altruism. No. There there's nothing about that that's like trying to help your fellow man.
It's making sure that you and your family look good. Godamn it. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so yeah, let's let's talk about more about like sumo through time
because, you know, we talk about this. Tell me about the first sumo. I want to know about the first sumo. So, sumo talks a lot about how it is a a
2,000-year-old sport. Um Mhm. So the first mention of of sumo like in
in any sort of like real writing comes from about 712 AD where it talks about
uh two gods uh decided to have a sumo match to determine possession of uh a
chunk of the Japanese islands. Um so the the two gods were uh oh god I'm going to
screw this up. TMI Kazuchi, the god of thunder, swordsmanship, and conquest,
versus Team Nakata, the god of water, wind, agriculture, and hunting, who is a
killed that dude. All right. Well, the the pronunciation is very solid. Uh, so he is the distant descendant of
Susanoo, uh, who is the right god of storms. Um, so, uh,
Kazuchi basically grappled the arm of, uh, Nika, uh, Mikata and, uh, they say
crushed it like a reed. Uh, and so one control of Izumo, which is the modern
Shiman Prefecture. Um, it is the most sacred place in all of Shinto. Uh,
is breaking your opponent's arm through squeezing real hard a valid way to win a
sua? If you just squeeze it maybe, but even then, like just because his arm breaks
doesn't mean you won, right? Um, I've seen some pretty gnarly things happen in sumo and the the injury
happening itself was not enough to win. Um, the other guy still has to step out or put his hand on the ground or
something. Um, is there a TKO? Like, can can you be technically knocked out?
You could be for real knocked out. Um, yeah, but if you're just like standing still,
but like obviously about to die. No, no. So, in sumo, someone has to win.
Or more accurately, someone has to lose. Um, so if you're just standing there
with a dangling arm because you dislocated it, you're you're not out yet. You haven't lost. Um
okay. So uh yeah so that they they fight over
this this province essentially in Japan. Um and from there that becomes sort of
the burst the the holiest place in Shinto. um which has produced over time.
That particular place produced uh former Sakiwake Okonowumi who I only really
know because he was a like hometown favorite to uh Jason of Jason's All Sumo
channel which was one of well it was one of my first exposures to western
coverage of Sumo. Um, and he in particular was a huge onboarding point
for a lot of people into Sumo over time. Not a name I was expecting to hear over
the course of this episode. Jason, like, yeah, like I I was expecting a lot of
Team Kuchi's Team Nikatas, but yeah. No, no, Jason.
No, no. Jason is an American uh English teacher in Japan. Uh, he's been there
for quite a long time. Um he he his his channel now is just Jason Sumo because
his other one got copy struck so much by the JSA which is like a whole other problem with like the JSA and their
interactions with like fans outside of Japan. Um but uh yeah so he was a big fan of
Okinowi uh and as well the 12th Yokozuna uh Kugoro was from there uh and
currently there's a wrestler named Riotaro from there. But for a place that
is the birthplace of Shinto, its connections to Sumo are not crazy deep. There's only like a dozen guys out of
that area. But um um the other uh early
reference to Sumo is from a document called Mihan Shoki uh which is basically like a this Japanese historical
chronicle from uh 19 or from sorry 720 uh which dates the first sumo according
to their claims in 23 BC uh where two guys wrestled and one guy uh kicked the
other guy to death. Um he kicked him and broke his rib and then kicked him in the
spine and he died. Um, was he still standing? I don't know.
Uh, so fun fact about historical sumo is that uh for a long time it was fought to
the death. Uh, right, sumo was not a sport. Sumo uh was at
first like a combination of um test of skill and and uh act for the gods and
eventual uh samurai training. Uh so okay, the first like historically attested
match that we know of uh aside from like this one reference to something that
happened hundreds of years ago uh was in 642 uh in the court of Empress Fiyoku
who was entertaining a Korean legation. Uh and Sumo from that point started
growing in popularity specifically within the courts. uh and the first
official rules so sort of formalized things uh popped up in the Hyon period
uh in the very late uh 8th century. So like about 795 uh through uh 1185. Um so
a good 300 years of the uh first growings of sumo. So that would that's
what I call sort of the ancient early history of sumo. Um the kicking people to death era. the
kicking people to death era. Um, so then we hit the Japanese Middle Ages. So, uh,
the emperor's authority starts collapsing. Uh, you may have heard of a a time called the Sangoku Jadai. Um,
but, uh, as Okay, but for people who haven't heard of the Sangoku Jedai, maybe like
there's a bunch of like wars happening. Yeah, it's the Japanese middle ages where where the emperor's control over
like the entire island is fading in the face of strong Japanese warlords uh with
the eventual culmination in in the establishment of the shogunut and the uh in particular the Tokugawa shogunut that
unites the islands of Japan under a military rule. Um so the the emperor's
authority starts collapsing uh and sumo starts shifting from a ceremonial
struggle to military combat training for samurai uh between you know that late uh
1100s there to the mid300s uh so by the time so that that' be the
uh Kamakura period um and then by the
time we shift now to the uh moromachi period it becomes more of a a mass
popular event. It shifts from military training to more entertainment. Uh so
various daimo starts sponsoring wrestlers. That's where you start getting this these ha established. Um
and your performance as a wrestler uh and the success of your HEA actually
became a way for someone to join the samurai class. uh your
what what do you think like pushed that in like an entertainment direction, right? Like going from like military
training to something that you go and watch with your buds like that that seems like a a pretty sharp turn.
Um do we know why that happened? We don't have a good like
you know there there's no like central thing that would kind of like catalyze
this. It seems like I I feel like all combat sports
eventually just through like I'm assuming
more military involvement like you know obviously in this period there's going to be a lot more internalized wars. So a
lot more people are being conscripted into militaries or or you know peasants are being forced to fight for local
daimos things like that. as those people have to interact with military culture a
lot more, they then start bringing it home. Um, right. And then, you know, as men are are bored
and drinking or things like that with their idol time, they find reasons to contest with each other. And since those
guys, you know, would have been familiar with that from, you know, it's just it's I I think it's part of the reason for
the rise of things like boxing, you know, uh, as guys were starting. I was thinking jousting. Like that's very
similar to the the trajectory that uh jousting took from like practicing doing
tilts to like tilt at your enemies in wartime scenarios to like hey it's kind of fun to just watch these two beat each
other with big sticks on horses, right? Yeah. And I mean, anytime you have sort of a new activity like that that's like I think I want to say like
sort of central to the economy or the culture, um, seeing who's the best at that. Well, I
mean, guys love to compete with each other just generally. So, anytime you have an opportunity for them to start
just like testing themselves against each other, they're going to start doing it and it will become more gamified um,
and lead to the development of I think I think basically I can't think of a sport
if you that if you go back far enough in its history doesn't start at least a little bit from some sort of military
application. Basketball. Uh basketball is an evolution of rugby
which isn't Oh, so we're doing permutations. I thought we were just going to name a
sport that didn't have military background and I was like I got one cuz I watched those Canadian heritage videos
back when I was a kid. Yeah. James Smith and his peach baskets didn't fight any wars but
I mean they did. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, um yeah, so um it
becomes sort of more popular uh mass event for entertainment. Um, and it becomes so popular that uh, Oda
Nobunaga, who people may remember as the protagonist from Shogun, but um, very
famously name. Yeah. Yeah. Very very famously uh, the the big head honcho of uh, the Shogun as
it finally united Japan uh, held a 1500man tournament in 1578.
Uh, and it was so many people that due to space due to space limitations in
his castle for the wrestlers and people who wanted to see it and everything
involved in it. That's when the first circular doses were created. It used to be a lot more free form, just like two
guys in the [ __ ] dirt just going ham. And now I was like, "Okay, well, you can
fight in this dirt, this circle of dirt, uh, which is officially rounded by hay
bales. It's officially 14.9 ft across, which is really weird." Um, I don't know,
slightly bigger in the middle of the circle. Uh, yeah, cuz they've got these little
cutouts for some reason. I don't know what that measurement is based off. I have to assume it's some sort of ancient
measurement that was standardized, but Who knows? Um, so yeah, they they
developed the cur the first circular dohoos which over time developed until
about the 18th century where you get now the the slightly raised doho um and the
uh the straw bales that define the edges, things like that. Um, so the winner of that tournament was given a
bow and he began dancing with it to show his gratitude which is now Okay, what type of bow? because this is
Japan. It could be a big like bow that you put in your hair or it could be a bow that shoots air.
It is a war bow. Um and now that bow,
the idea behind that bow is that now that's incorporating into the daily closing ceremonies of the tournament. So there is a a bow twirler who does a
little performance with a traditional Japanese bow, unstrung, but um yeah,
they do a little dance every day with the bow. Um, and in fact, some of the So, this is what I'm saying. Like, you
you tell me that somebody's doing a dance with a little bow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then there's a couple of No, no, no. Masculine bows. These are
manly bows. Um, yeah. So, that even extends down to some of the special prizing is like bow,
strings, and like arrows. Um but uh
so it it it grew in popularity but started to become a nuisance in the start of the uh Edeto period due to
basically just like guys fighting in the streets wildly just because they just I'll show you my
sumos you like just guys being dudes. I don't know what it was but it got so out
of hand that they banned it in6003. This sounds like exactly the sort of [ __ ] that you would get up to. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Um like I I would be that guy that's over on the side being like, "No, I don't
want to show you my sumo." Yeah. And I'd be there slapping my gut like, "Ah, sumo time."
Uh so yeah, they banned this sport for like 80 years. Like there's just like that's a long time.
No sumo anywhere. And then in 1684 they said, "Okay, you can have one charity
sumo at the shrine." So at uh tell me uh years who would even know the sport
still. That's yeah it's it's one of those things where like h no one's really been
able to articulate to me at least not that I've seen how the sports survived
going underground for so long. I have to absolutely fight clubs. I have to assume
it was like the Shinto priests and the Shinto temples like keeping it on
grounds in secret like hey we're just like like kung fu at a temple like we're just going to keep doing this just out
of sight you know um so yeah they allow I kind of love the idea of like you walk
past any Shinto shrine and there's like the four fat monks yeah everybody knows everybody knows
that the four fat mons do okay I'm going I'm going to sidebar for a second because you keep bringing up
fat. Uh, right. The fat thing did not really take off
until like the modern era. Um,
these guys were it sumo was an openweight sport and
generally being bigger is better. Um, I don't know if you've had any interactions with uh any fighting sport,
but there's weight classes for a reason. Um, yes. Yeah. Yes, there are.
Yeah, I did do some boxing as a younger man and uh was definitely fighting above what my weight class should have been.
Yeah, Floyd Mayweather only gets to be Floyd Mayweather because he fights other guys the same size as Floyd Mayweather.
If Floyd Mayweather has to fight Mike Tyson, there's a problem. Um, so, uh, Sumo says that's a you
problem. Uh, and so get bigger. Um,
so fair. Yeah. Uh, but the the idea of just like these guys obviously got bigger through
daily training and all the the just like workout stuff they would do. Um, even now sumo encourages a lot of like cross
trainining for muscle development and and just general strength training. Um, but putting on an extra layer of weight
has never been a bad idea because essentially the way that these athletic guys put on fat is that it's
subcutaneous fat and almost forms like a layer of armor over their muscles. Um,
both to protect them and just give them extra power in their hips and stability. Um,
that is not the type of fat I have. I have intramuscular which is significantly
worse for you cuz it's all wrapped around my organs. keeping them nice and insulated.
Uh so uh Tomioa Hachiman Shrine holds
this charity sumo tournament uh and the
shortly after the first official sumo sumo organization is developed uh and
they start formalizing the sport. Um so most of the elements well not most but
many of the elements that survive to the modern day are established at this time. So, uh, late 1600s, early 1700s, you
start getting things like the doer or the ring entry ceremony, the formalization of hyas, uh, under a
stable master, uh, the guoji or the referees and their ranks and structures,
uh, and the moashi itself. It used to just be literally guys fighting in their underwear. Now it's like, okay, we're going to make this combination of belt
and underwear that is like the uniform of a sport both for functionality and for, you know, modesty. Um,
which I mean modesty heavy meme'd on. I was I was going to say uh
minor note, there is a third way to lose a match of sumo and that's if your dick
falls out. Okay. If anyone sees your dong, you lose.
So like small dong better. Yes. Yeah, maybe.
Okay. Um I mean at that size it probably doesn't matter.
So uh and then with this follow-up into the uh 18th century, you start getting
the first Yokazuna um or the the champions of the sport. Now
I'm going to take a slight sidebar just to talk about Yokazuna specifically. So uh the first so there are currently
uh I believe it's 76 75 just to clarify we are talking about the
like world wrestling federation. No, we're talking about the person at the
top of the Bonsai Cave for Sumo, the grand champion. Uh, who is the WWF star from the 80s,
weirdly enough? No. And he was from the '9s. And was he? He was from the late ' 80s.
He was from the '9s because his success was tied into the success of the Hawaiian wrestlers who went over to Sumo
and became Yokazunas. And then in a weird turn of events, Akibono came back as a Yokazuna and fought in the WWE.
I feel like you have some feelings about this.
So many feelings. Um anyways, uh so the first three Yokazuda
uh were awarded posumously. These guys were dead and they were like that guy was the goat. So they got their
titles posumously. Um and then for a long time the title of Yokazuno was
actually something that was um not part of the rankings of the sport. It was
unofficially given to any Ozaki which is champion uh who happened to perform in
front of the emperor. Um and you actually got a Yokozuna license from one
of the uh two competing houses that made up the judges. Um really stupid. There's
the Yoshida clan and the Gojo clan and they for a long time fought over like
the right to essentially control Sumo. Um Okay. And even now both families are
represented in the Gioji uh in modern sumo. Just they're not like in competition. It's just two histories.
Um but the fact that they're named clan makes them sound like ninja. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that. Well, they do they do
wear tabby socks on the dojo, so not far off. Um, so the first two
official like alive Yokazuna were Okinawa Kisaburo and Tanikaz Kajjinos
and they kind of got at the same time. They was like, "Hey, these two guys are super good." And then eventually uh
Tanikaz trained a guy named Raiden Tamimon. Raiden Tamimon
wound up becoming like this mythologized character as as a sumo wrestler. Um in
the 18th century he was 6'6 in Japan.
So he was a giant. Like they described him as being three heads taller than
everyone else around him. Um he he was uh
how do I explain this? This guy became an Ozaki or a champion in 1795 and
stayed that way for 17 years. Um okay, between 1793 and 1800, he had the best
record in every tournament he participated in. Uh he
after 1800 he was still dominant uh to the point where sumo officials banned
him from using his favorite techniques just to keep things interesting. Okay.
In his career he won 28 of 35 tournaments with a record of 254 wins
and 10 losses. Now, god damn that number sounds small compared to
modern sumo wrestlers, but keep in mind at that time there was only two tournaments a year and they would only be like 10 days long and you didn't have
to fight every day. So, you'll see the historical records of his wins with like
61 and one or 5-0 and things like this whereas modern people just that's not at
all how they work. Um, but he was considered unbelievably dominant. He had a a record of like 44 wins in a row. um
just untouched. Damn. Uh and still revered as like essentially
the first like true yoga. Um so
Muhammad Ali of Sumo. Yeah, exactly. Um eventually the with the Yoshitas and the
Gojo fighting for the right to award Yokazuna licenses, the Yoshida family
won because the 15th Yokazuna uh a guy named uh Umeatani Totaro uh who was a
super strong wrestler said, "I want to get my license from the Oshida family."
And this was in uh 1884. And then after that point, no one recognized Gojo
family licenses. They were like, "Ah, just kidding." Um,
so yeah, that that is how things worked up until uh the Miji era. Um, so
okay, it was it was a tough time to be called a yoku because it seemed like it was very
political. I want to keep talking about this. Yeah. But I wonder if maybe getting into
the Maji era, this would be a good time to like put a cap on it and do a part two. Is that
Sure. Uh because the Maji era essentially starts modern sumo. Yeah. And I feel like there's a lot of
modern sumo. Uh there's an okay amount that the funny thing about Modern Sumo
is that they formalized it which meant it got less weird and interesting, but there's still been a few other
things that deserved their own time in the spotlight, including the controversies of uh the modern modern
age or everything after 2000. And uh
do you want to plug the new show? Is that Yeah. So, uh, like he's mentioned, we
are, well, I am going to be hosting a new show called Maple Sumo. Um, we are
going to start with the, uh, announcement of the May Bonske or not
May, uh, the March Bonske, which is coming up in about a week. Um, I will be
going over uh who is on the the top ranks there. Um, I am going to point out some of the
heroes and villains of Sumo because the the best part about Sumo are the
storylines and the weird like politics and intricacies of it. Um, so I'll tell
you who I like and why I like them, who I hate and why I hate them. There's never a good reason. I've just decided
they're a villain. Um, and then, uh, starting with the, uh, the March
tournament, we'll be doing daily uploads with a quick recap of the matches from
the top division. Um, and then between Basho, uh, we'll do, uh, bi-weekly
updates with, uh, sumo news, maybe some interesting stories or developments of
things that happened, uh, interspersed with, um, explanatory episodes for certain aspects of sumo culture and
lifestyle, and, uh, the odd like profile of of significant
wrestlers through history. And like Josh said, he is handling the hosting on this one alone. So if you
find me pretentious and annoying, you don't need to worry about that going into the new show. I will just be
handling the uh the editing and publication side. Yes. Come see me express my Japanese
hyperfixation on this one thing. Yeah. Yeah. Remember that I'm the weeb,
I guess.
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