We are often asked ” what is the most popular sport in Japan ?” Probably ten to one the Japanese will answer either baseball or football.  It’s true, but maybe SUMO is the most traditional Japanese sport and it’s loved anytime in the bottom of the heart of Japanese people.

When we see baseball or football, we enjoy and get excited to see it.  In the case of SUMO, we don’t get excited much. One of the reasons for that calm mind is that SUMO itself is rather a quiet mental sport.  The fighting time is at most 1 minute, its really short. But the ceremony like interval time before the fight is much longer than fighting time. 

The Japanese don’t get bored when seeing those ceremony things because it’s a kind of spiritual time for holly fight.  We would rather think it’s wonderful for the concentration of mind.

In this way, SUMO is always loved by the Japanese as a traditional sport of Japan with pure Japanese mentality.

One interesting aspect in SUMO recently is that there are some international SUMO wrestlers now. In addition, they are strong.  The top rank of the SUMO wrestler is Grand Champion among more than 30  or 40 strict ranking levels.  There are 2 Grand Champion ranked  Sumo wrestler now, and both of them are from Mongol, not from Japan ( as photo ). The next rank is called Ozeki or Great Wrestler ( not sure about translation ).  There also are 2 wrestlers on this rank. One of them are from Bulgaria, not from Japan again.

It means 3 top wrestlers out of top 4 is from foreign countries !

We often had international wrestlers from Hawaii, that’s probably because Hawaii and Japan has long time relation in the history and Sumo has been popular in Hawaii among Japanese immigrants.

But now, not only from Hawaii but from many parts of the world,  new wrestler applicants are coming up. And they often are stronger than Japanese wrestlers. It’s really interesting.

One top wrestler often behaves dramatically appealing the victory before or after the fighting, which is not thought to be a manner of SUMO or out of tradition, and it’s regarded as lack of total character.  Top wrestlers are requested to be the good model of the people in SUMO because it’s been a traditional sport.

For the wrestler, maybe it’s not that bad behavior at all. This is a total cultural gap.  In some ways, both side people need to overcome this barrier in the long run.