tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-95438112011-06-08T14:06:08.968+09:00One little man's journey into the world of sumo wrestlingJacob Adelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11786028146543452624noreply@blogger.comBlogger351100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9543811.post-24479171663603289062007-11-19T10:33:00.000+09:002007-11-19T10:55:36.485+09:00

Much of the content of this blog appeared in magazine form in the Summer Edition (No. 67) of Kyoto Journal. View the (slow loading) pdf here.

Jacob Adelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11786028146543452624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9543811.post-1153608065719789262006-07-23T07:32:00.000+09:002006-07-23T09:44:15.266+09:00

After a year or so offline, I’m reposting “In the Hall of the Mountain Kings,” my blog chronicling life among sumo wrestlers. I had taken it offline while I used its entries as notes to write the magazine-length story that served as my journalism school master’s thesis. With that project long finished, I decided there’s no reason not to repost.I must apologize for never really bringing any

Jacob Adelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11786028146543452624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9543811.post-1112250669033065462005-03-31T15:28:00.000+09:002007-11-19T10:58:30.344+09:00

Enter here.

Jacob Adelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11786028146543452624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9543811.post-1110819707408691162005-03-15T01:49:00.000+09:002005-03-17T01:27:45.000+09:00

Not many matches after the Sekitori's victory on the first day of the January tournament, the juryo bouts ended. I could tell from the printed schedule and the lighted scoreboards hanging over the eastern and western sides of the auditorium that the highest-ranking wrestlers, the makuuchi, would begin fighting. According to the schedule, their ring-entry ceremony, in which they would all be

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I was glad to see the Sekitori win his match. Having lived under the same roof for a couple weeks, I felt a sort of loyalty toward him, despite his mistreatment of the stable's other wrestlers. But I was also surprised by how much support he got from other fans. Why had he received so many cheers?, I wondered.One answer came in the form of an email from an English fan who said he trains at the

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After we left the wrestlers' changing room, Miki took me into the press club office, the walls of which were stained yellow. In an earlier time, before smoking was banned in the entire Kokugikan, only the most devoted chain smokers probably dared enter. Dark smudges spotted the yellow surface and the place smelled like old sesame oil, as though decades of Chinese takeout had permeated the

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I got to Ryogoku on Sunday—the first day of the tournament—at 10 in the morning, about two hours after the matches had started. A wrestler got off the train the same time I did, presumably on his way to compete. Downstairs from the platforms, I saw Tatsuya passing through the ticket gates. He didn't recognize me at first, perhaps because I was wearing a jacket and tie and had let my beard and

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THE "POWER MOUND"Just inside the Kokugikan's entrance hall was a glass display case filled with sumo trophies. There was a giant chrome Coke bottle—"the Coca-Cola trophy," according to the plaque at its base. Another trophy was a huge glass cylinder filled with dehydrated mushrooms. The "Czech cup" was a giant crystal goblet that stood in front of a Pilsner Urquell beer poster.I was looking over

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The day after I saw the wrestlers train in front of the yokozuna promotion council, Miki, the Yomiuri reporter who'd arranged my stay at the stable—and whom I still hadn't met in person—sent me an email. He wrote that the sumo association was going to hold a dohyo-matsuri on Saturday morning to sanctify the ring at the Kokugikan before the start of the January tournament. He invited me to drop by

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Once, while I was typing up some notes in the bedroom at the stable, I asked Murayoshi what the real name was for what I'd been calling the "Zamboni sessions," during which the wrestlers push each other across the ring between grappling matches. "Butsukarigeiko," he answered. "It's the most brutal part of practice."After a moment, he asked me, "Do you think we're rough on each other?" "Yes," I

Jacob Adelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11786028146543452624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9543811.post-1106722522620736392005-01-26T15:55:00.000+09:002005-02-02T10:40:35.323+09:00

I went directly from the Oyakata's office back to the stable. There was more I wanted to talk to the wrestlers about. It was obvious to me what motivated them to progress through the ranks: like I wrote before, promotion means an exponential improvement in the quality of their lives. But what motivated them to join the stable in the first place has was a mystery to me. I asked them, of course,

Jacob Adelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11786028146543452624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9543811.post-1106558462790251502005-01-24T18:18:00.000+09:002006-08-14T02:23:30.906+09:00

Visit The Photo Hall of the Mountain Kings.NEXT: The Stablemates and I

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THE OYAKATA, AT THE STABLE At three o'clock, I arrived at the Oyakata's office, the same place that Usuda brought me to weeks ago when I moved into the stable. I saw the Oyakata marking up papers at his desk in the back of the room. "My name is Jacob," I told the receptionist by the door. "I have an appointment with Hanaregomo Oyakata." She asked me to wait and walked to the back of the room,

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Once Usuda and the wrestler he was trailing disappeared down the street, I headed back toward the Kokugikan and ducked into the sumo museum housed on its grounds. It was smaller than I'd expected: just one room, with exhibits lining the walls and a display case running down the middle of the floor.The museum's exhibits were arranged chronologically, implying a continuum in sumo from the ancient

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When the Oyakata was born about a half century ago on the south end of Japan's main island, his parents named him Teruyuki Nishimori. As a wrestler, he adopted Kaiketsu as his shikona, or ring name. Soon after retiring from wrestling in 1979 as an ozeki, he started Hanaregoma stable and began to be known as Hanaregoma-oyakata, literally "Master Hanaregoma."One man. Three names. Like geisha,

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The morning after the bon-en-kai, I was sitting in my usual spot behind the Kashira when the Oyakata came downstairs and sat on his cushion. He nodded off the wrestlers' deferential greeting and leaned toward me. "You're leaving today?" he asked. "That's right," I said. "You know, you're welcome to stay," he said. "You know that, right?" The Oyakata had offered to put me up for as long as I

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HARUKI, THE YOBIDASHI When Haruki was four, his family moved to Tokyo from Beijing, where he was born. His father's father was Japanese and his parents thought they'd have a better chance of carving out a decent life for themselves in Japan. Within a couple years, they'd opened a Chinese restaurant on the northern fringe of the city, where a friend of the Kashira was a regular customer. Through

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So there I was, alone in the upstairs bedroom, snooping through Iki's photos. I was about to put them down and move back to my little encampment on the floor when I noticed the laminated image taped to his metal briefcase. It seemed to an advertisement that featured him holding a bottle of MOET champagne while he did a variation of his "Japanese geisha boy" pose. I was trying to puzzle out the

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KAZUYA When I dropped in on the Oyakata the other day, he told me that convincing potential wrestlers to join his stable was seldom an easy task. "You keep talking to them, not just once or twice, but over and over," he said. "It can take a year or two until they come around." That seemed to have been the case with Kazuya. He first met the Oyakata when he graduated from junior high school,

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HIROKI AND TATSUYA, THE TAKEMURA BROTHERS Aside from the few months he spent as a mediocre judo wrestler in middle school, Hiroki never really played sports, he said. But his grades were never great: he'd had to go to summer school for math and science in order to graduate from middle school and just a couple months into his first year of high school, he was already in danger of failing it. Not

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But as uneventful and anticlimactic as it was, last Monday was not my last time in a mawashi. The next day—my second to last in the stable—I put one on again, only this time it was for mochi-tsuki. Mochi are the chewy rice cakes that are eaten year-round in Japan, but are especially popular during the New Year's holiday. Mochi-tsuki is the traditional way of making mochi, by hammering cooked

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On Saturday, the eve of Christmas day, I was watching television with some younger wrestlers in the common room. On the television, a comedy duo called "99" was taking Nakai, a member of the pop group SMAP, on a tour of Japan, setting him up for a practical joke or placing him in an absurd situation at each stop along the way. At one point, they brought him to a hot spring, where he sat in an

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I didn't practice on Saturday morning either. After the discouragement I'd been getting from the wrestlers, I wanted to check with the Oyakata, and hadn't had a chance to. So, again, I came downstairs to watch from the common room when I woke up. It was a busy day for spectators in the stable. Not long after I'd taken a seat in my customary spot near the heater behind the Kashira, two

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Last Tuesday, I didn't practice with the sumo wrestlers because my legs hurt from my workout with them the day before. On Wednesday, the wrestlers remade the dohyo instead of practicing, and on Thursday they had the day off to process the banzuke. So by Thursday night, with most of the pain having left my legs, I was eager to get back in the ring when practice resumed the following morning. I

Jacob Adelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11786028146543452624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9543811.post-1104491518817957662004-12-31T20:11:00.000+09:002005-01-31T13:49:23.113+09:00

Japan is known for its social stratification, but I think the importance of status in contemporary Japanese life can sometimes be overestimated. Sure, people use different honorifics when addressing different people, and they show noticeable deference when talking to their bosses and other superiors. But these, I think, are largely remnants of an older Japan. Indeed, elder Japanese often lament

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When Tatsuya said he wanted to get to the top of the banzuke, I'm sure he had in mind the fame and glory that would come from being a luminary of the sumo world. Wrestlers may no longer enjoy the esteem they once did in Japan, with Japan's increasingly international perspective favoring its soccer and baseball players. But sumo wrestlers still have their fans, including generous patrons who offer

Jacob Adelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11786028146543452624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9543811.post-1104213672745783812004-12-28T15:00:00.000+09:002005-01-31T13:44:32.596+09:00

On Thursday, the same day that the gyoji with the bad combover came to sanctify the dohyo, the banzuke arrived. Banzuke—sumo ranking sheets—list everyone in the sumo universe, from wrestlers to yobidashi, each arranged according to his rank. A new banzuke usually comes out two weeks before the start of the next bimonthly sumo tournament—the exception is the banzuke whose publication precedes the

Jacob Adelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11786028146543452624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9543811.post-1104058925383956792004-12-26T20:01:00.000+09:002005-01-31T13:46:31.193+09:00

Three times each year, Hanaregomabeya, the stable where I'm staying, tears up and then remakes its practice floor. Japan's sumo association requires all of Tokyo's stables to do this and it probably has some mystical purpose, but when I asked Murayoshi why they do it, he just said, "I don't know. I guess the center of the ring gets worn out?" The whole process, called dohyo-tsukuri, takes three

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I woke up on Tuesday morning sandwiched between the blankets of my warm futon feeling snug and content. It didn't take me long, though, to remember where I was and that I had to get out of that warm cocoon to stand in the cold for a couple hours wearing nothing but heavy canvas underpants. So I procrastinated until my roommates started waking up and going downstairs themselves. Then I finally

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Early morning in the sumo stable has an enchanted air. Nobody speaks, though they mumble to themselves and breath heavily, drifting through the hallways in their light robes and silently binding their wounds from the previous day with white bandages. It was a mood I was reluctant to break Monday morning, but didn't know how else to get myself ready for the ring. Finally, Hiroki saw me looking

Jacob Adelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11786028146543452624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9543811.post-1103611765319353182004-12-21T15:48:00.000+09:002005-01-31T13:39:08.133+09:00

Sunday was the stable's day off; no morning training. None of my roommates were around when I went to bed the previous night, and when I awoke, all but Moriyasu—who still hadn't come home—were fast asleep. Downstairs, a handful of wrestlers were lounging around the common room in front of the television. Mitsui, a quiet, serious guy who wore glasses, sat against the wall, reading a comic book.

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I woke up on Saturday around six in the morning, as the wrestlers in the room were slowly getting themselves out of bed and preparing for practice. The hulk in the futon across the room from my own, Saita, had rolled up his bedding and was sitting on the floor in the dark, bandaging his wrists and ankles. After he left, I got up and went downstairs. I ran into Batto in the hallway. He was

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It would be nice to think that sumo wrestlers get fat on fine sashimi and Kobe beef, maybe with a little bit of foie gras thrown in on international night. But it wouldn't be anything close to the truth. The sumo diet is nothing to envy.I had my first taste of sumo fare Friday evening, a few hours after I got to the stable. As the late afternoon naptime wrapped itself up, the wrestlers trickled

Jacob Adelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11786028146543452624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9543811.post-1103364444951627212004-12-18T19:02:00.000+09:002005-02-02T16:56:09.760+09:00

Miki-san, the Yomiuri sports writer who arranged for me to stay in the stable, was going to be out of town yesterday, when the sumo stable expected me to move in, so he had one of his colleagues, Usaoa-san, deliver me. Usaoa met me at Ryogoku station, near the Kokugikan, Tokyo's sumo stadium and headquarters, from which a junior wrestler was supposed to accompany me to the stable. Usaoa walked

Jacob Adelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11786028146543452624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9543811.post-1103249950204179362004-12-17T11:17:00.000+09:002005-03-16T03:28:19.960+09:00

Years ago I sat in Philadelphia's airport about to board a plane to Japan, not knowing what to expect of the place. I knew I was going to live in a dormitory for foreigners, mostly teachers, but didn't know what it would look like. I didn't know how hard it would be to find food that I could eat, clothes that I could wear, or people I could relate to. I knew that coffee was supposed to be

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