SUMO STRUT

First the naked man festival, now sumo: a theme for this year seems to be emerging, namely ogling nude men in Japan.  I made my first foray into the sport of sumo wrestling this past weekend, and found it to be surprisingly interesting (compared to the 4 hours I spent at my first kabuki play, which I will never get back).  In Roald Dahl's classic, The BFG, the female protagonist, Sophie, is kidnapped and taken to Giant Country, where she is terrified by the horde of tall, hairy, smelly, man-eating behemoths in loincloths.  In this sense, sumo is a lot like being lost in Giant Country, except instead of eating human beings, wrestlers are fattened up on chanko nabe, an exceptionally fatty kind of soup.  Sumo began some 1500 years ago, and originally was a Shinto ritual beseeching good harvests.  Sumo is fought in a ring called a dohyo, which is about 15 feet in diameter, a raised platform of rice sacks.  Above the dohyo is suspended a roof resembling that of a Shinto shrine.  

This 6 pack is not for the squeamish

Pre-tournament ritual

The bout begins with stretches and the sumo strut.  Facing the audience, wrestlers raise one leg at a time, only to slam it down, hard.  They purify their mouths with water, wipe their bodies with a towel, and throw handfuls of salt into the ring to purify it.  They then enter the ring itself, do more leg slams, and scowl at each other as they squat, butts out.  Each wrestler lays a fist on the ground; first one, and then the other.  When both sets of fists are on the ground, the match can start, unless one wrestler quickly takes his fist from the floor, and goes off for more stretching, water, and salt-throwing.  This is supposed to be part of an elaborate process of psychological warfare.  Really, it's a rather tedious 4 minutes of waiting for the initial clash.  

Stomp

The fights themselves are quick, sometimes just a couple of seconds.  A match is won when a wrestler either touches the floor of the ring with something other than his feet, or moves outside of it.  Balance is perhaps the most important skill, and many victors win simply by using their opponent's weight against him.  As one wrestler rushes at the other, the second man quickly steps back and lets his opponent make a face plant on the floor. There are other popular maneuvers as well, including flipping, pushing, and grabbing hold of an opponent's mawashi (sumo diaper), and yanking on it, creating a giant wedgie.  Some contestants are so strong that they can literally pick their opponent up and place him on his feet outside of the ring.  Kicking in the stomach or chest, punching, hair pulling, eye gouging and choking are not permitted.  Slapping is allowed, however, and some of the lower-ranking matches resembled a slap fight more than a wrestling match.     

Flip

Wedgie

Push

Most surprising? There are a ton of foreign wrestlers who participate in sumo.  One of the poster boys (literally) for the sport is a 6'8" blond haired, blue eyed mammoth Mongolian.  The only foreigner I saw win a match was a Belgian, and the audience's reaction was more fitting for an English cricket party than a stadium affair.  Conversely, when the 8 or so other foreign competitors lost, Japanese fans were up on their feet, cheering and clapping.  

Beginning in 2010, the honor of sumo has been sullied by multiple confirmed charges of match fixing.  A range of people have been implicated, from tournament officials to the wrestlers themselves.  A lot of the match rigging has occurred in connection with the notorious yakuza, who run most of the gambling outfits in Japan.  Since sumo is considered the national pastime, many people, including Prime Minister Naoto Kan, have perceived this skulduggery as an affront against the Japanese people.  Judging by the crowds, however, the scandals haven't deterred the fans.   

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER

Cross-cultural dating isn't common in Japan, but when you do see it, 98% of the time it's Japanese girls with western guys.  There is apparently a dearth of relationships between foreign girls and Japanese guys.  I've heard more than a few stories of JETs who thought they had a Japanese boyfriend, only to find out that they were being used for English practice.  And although Japanese men love to flirt with western women, few of them seem keen to bring home a foreign girlfriend to introduce to their families, even men who have lived abroad for some period of time.  

Of the foreign male/Japanese female pairings, some of these couples end up getting married and stay in Japan, while others relocate to the groom's home country.** More often than not, the male half of these inter-cultural relationships would not be considered the most eligible of bachelors in their countries of origin, but they manage to do excessively well here (though that luck can run out).  I was introduced to a strange and handsome outgoing ALT when I arrived, who was proud of his Cassanova reputation (and true to form, he hit on me within a few minutes of our first meeting).  However, when he left JET, he was dismayed to find that he did not have as much success with the ladies of his homeland as he did with his Japanese girlfriends.  It seems that the lines that work on Japanese girls don't translate into other cultures.   

Particularly curious are the men of questionable sexual orientation who date and even marry Japanese women.  [I can't actually confirm that these guys are gay, but the very fact they set off my non-existent gaydar is compelling evidence.]  I once read that this was due to the fact that Japanese women's bodies are often fairly androgynous.  However, one of my friends here offered a different theory: "Yeah, gay men marry Japanese women because after they get married and have kids, couples pretty much stop having sex.  The houses are so small that often the kids sleep with the parents, so it's kind of a perfect arrangement for guys who are in the closet."  Mystery solved?    

**Out of curiosity, I asked someone whether women are considered "tainted" after their relationships end with western men, as it seems unlikely to me that westerners would commit to a celibate relationship the way some Japanese men might. Apparently this isn't much of an issue, as pre-marital sex is not uncommon in Japan.  I was a little curious as to how couples manage this when everyone lives with their parents until marriage, but apparently, this is the #1 purpose of love hotels.