With its imperial beginnings, Sumo certainly started out on the right side of the tracks, but, curiously enough, the very first grand tournament, or basho, was held in a temple compound, and temple and shrine grounds continued to be one of the favorite sites for bouts through the centuries. These religious and imperial ties probably account to a large extent for Sumo's being adorned with so much pageantry even today.
Professional Sumo is said to have originated in the sixteenth century under the overlordship of the famous Oda Nobunaga; but its colorful history of men of valor, real and legendary, dates back further. We are told that about eleven hundred years ago there was a muscle-man named Hajikami living in Omi, the present Shiga Prefecture, who was so strong that the ordinary run-of-the-mill wrestler could not handle him. He always won hands down and took all the fun out of the sport, so one resourceful referee at a contest in Osaka's Sumiyoshi Shrine obtained a coil of thick rope, or shimenawa, and tied it around Hajikami's middle. To even things up, it was announced that any man who could succeed in touching the rope would be declared the winner. This, of course, added some spice to the proceedings, but even at that Hajikami remained undefeated. It is thanks to him that great white hawsers still adorn the midriffs of the grand champions, or yokozuna, even today (see Plates 5, 6, 12 & 13). Ironically enough, however, Hajikami was not proclaimed first grand champion. That honor was reserved for another Sumo great, Akashi Shiga-no-suke, a figure shrouded in mystery of whom there is actually no precise record available.
It seems that in the early part of the seventeenth century a great tournament was held at the imperial court in Kyoto. Akashi, the sun of a samurai, defeated Nio Nidaya, of Nagasaki, to win the tourney and become the first official yokozuna in the history of Sumo. He reputedly stood over eight feet tall and weighed over four hundred pounds, but the figures are not official, and he has no doubt grown in stature with every passing generation. Not long after copping the title, he came up to Edo, as Tokyo was then called, and appeared at the Sasa-dera, a temple in Yotsuya, on the occasion of the first grand tournament ever held in the present capital of Japan.
We are on much firmer ground when we come to Tanikaze Kaji no-suke, the fourth grand champion and possibly the greatest of them all. The son of a poor farmer of the Tohoku region in the north, he was born in 1749 and hailed from the neighborhood of Sendai, in Miyagi Prefecture. During a period of eight years in the ring he piled up the amazing record of 183 wins, 12 losses, and 25 ties, in a total of 220 bouts. That gives him an average of .938. His achievement of going through sixty-six bouts without a defeat has been bettered only by Futabayama's sixty-nine. In contrast to some of his legendary predecessors, Tanikaze was a mere six feet two inches in height, and his 344 pounds put him in about the same class as the modern pot-bellied Kagamisato. He finally succumbed, not to an opponent in the ring but to an attack of influenza and died in 1795 at the age of forty-six. A Japanese saying has it that "There Dc:Ver was the equal of Tanikaz before or since." His name means "wind of the valley."
The next star in the ranks of the great was Raiden Tame-emon, a 370-pound six-foot-three-incher who wrestled at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. His greatest feat was to win no less than twenty-five tournaments, seven of them in succession. Raiden holds the dubious distinction of remaining in the champion, or ozeki, slot for seventeen years; he was never elevated to the rank of grand champion because he roughed it up too much. The only man who could get away with that sort of stuff was the before-mentioned Nomi-no-sukune.
Coming to comparatively modern times, the two great wrestlers of the Meiji era were without a doubt Totaro Ume-ga-tani II (1878-1927) and Hitachiyama Taniemon (1874-1922). Ume-ga-tani chalked up a wonderful winning average of .920, but in fifteen tilts with his arch-rival Hitachiyama, his amazing technique seemed to be of no avail, and he managed to come out on top but thrice. Hitachi-yama walked away with seven matches, and the rest were ties. Bouts between these two are said to have been really terrific, the greatest in modern Sumo. Ume-ga-tani, with his five feet six inches, tipped the scales at 335 pounds. Hitachiyama towered two inches above him, but was inferior in weight, being a measly 320 pounds.
Hitachiyama, the nineteenth yokozuna, was an all-time great. After attaining maku-uchi (inside-the-curtain) rank he lost only eight times in eighteen tournaments, spread over nine years. He was truly a stupendous personage of the period. He might indeed be called the prototype of the modern Sumo man, being the first Japanese wrestler ever to go abroad. In 1907 he visited the United States where he was presented to "Teddy" Roosevelt; he was accompanied by the present Dewa-no-umi, until recently head of the Japan Sumo Association. Visitors to the Sumo Museum at the Kuramae Kokugi Hall may see the top hat and walking stick that Hitachiyama sported when he went to the States. Naturally, he took with him an apron, such as all Sumo wrestlers wear at the dohyo-iri, their daily ceremonial entry into the arena. But none has ever been graced with one like Hitachiyama's. It was studded with diamonds and was worth millions.
In throwing a few bouquets, one might consider Tanikaze, Hitachiyama, and Futabayama (Plate 1), of whom more anon, to be Sumo's great trio; but men like Terukuni, who in 1944 at the age of twenty-four became the youngest grand champion on record, should not be forgotten. The opposite sort of record was set up by the twelfth yokozuna, Jimmaku, in the mid nineteenth century. He was actually thirty-nine years of age when he attained the rank of grand champion, and he carried on long after that. These days, with six big tourneys a year, that kind of staying power is out of the question. It's like baseball. With all those night games there'll be no more like Ty Cobb or Eddie Collins, who carried on for over twenty seasons.
CHAPTER 2
Born Sumoists
It is a hotly debatable question whether or not baseball has supplanted Sumo as the national sport of Japan.
Undoubtedly in such great centers of population as Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, one sees more youths with bat, ball, and glove than one sees practicing the land's ancient and traditional sport. In many parts of the country, nonetheless (particularly true in the case of the farming villages of the north and the fishing villages), the reverse is to be found. The rustic Sumo ring often takes the place of the urban baseball diamond.
There are quite a number of reasons for Sumo's popularity with the country boys, one being, of course, that the rural areas have enjoyed much less frequent contact with Western influences. In many districts feudalism is still rife, apparent if one but scratches the surface, and the great Japanese professional baseball squads in their provincial tours never touch these remote areas.
Another reason is economic. The farmers in the north eke out a bare living, the land is poor, crop failures are not uncommon. They have little money to spend on their sons' pastimes. Consequently, the boys take up the cheapest sport they can find. Sumo, of course, fills the bill perfectly. All that is required is a simple ring and a loin-cloth, and the latter, it is unnecessary to add, need not be studded with diamonds. Just something to spare the sensitivities of the country maidens.
Incidentally, it is no mere coincidence that so many of Japan's grand champions hail from Hokkaido or the northeastern districts, areas throughout the long winter under a blanket of deep snow, trudging through which strengthens the hips-a vital part of every wrestler's anatomy. The same thing may be said of youths from the mountains. It is natural that they should be able to develop stronger hips than the lads who walk only on the flat, non-hip-developing plains. In rowing, too, the hips come into much play. Thus, the sons of fishermen often turn out to be good wrestlers. The greatest sumoist of modern times, Futabayama-now retired and, under the name of Tokitsukaze, head of the Japan Sumo Association-is a fisherman's son from the Kyushu prefecture of Oita, in southwest Japan.
Of