Natsu Basho News
The May Sumo tournament has come and gone and as tournaments go, it was an interesting one. It was won by Bulgarian ozeki Kotooshu, who became the first ever European sumo wrestler to win one of the major tournaments, winning 13 out of his 14 matches, 12 of those being consecutive. He also managed to beat the two highest ranking wrestlers in the tournament, the yokozuna Asashoryu and Hakuho. This is epecially surprising given his form was going downhill for a while and he’d been written off as a prospect. Video highlights of his matches (he’s the tall one):
Of course, the other big news of the tournament was this match-up, between the two yokozuna Asashoryu and Hakuho below:
It may not seem like much. But watch it again. Hakuho (the one on the right with the brown mawashi [belt]) had lost at the point where his hands touched the floor of the arena, however notice the extra push that Asashoryu gives him. Then Hakuho gets up, gives him a shoulder barge and they glare at each other.
Living in a land where the national sport is rugby, the fact that the above scene caused a great deal of controversy seems odd. But this is Japan and the sport of sumo isn’t just the national sport, it still has all sorts of ceremonial religious overtones and to certain people, it’s very tied into the national identity. So the only two wrestlers of the highest rank acting in a dishonourable manner sent people into a tizzy and prompted phone calls and letter writing and all that sort of thing. Unfortunately there’s a nasty edge to it – there are racial undertones, given that Hakuho and Asashoryu are both Mongolian wrestlers and there’s some amount of discomfort at the perceived foreign dominance of the sport. Lots of old people watch sumo wrestling, you see. And of course in addition, there are people wondering if promoting Kotooshu to yokozuna will be good or bad for the sport.
So they’re all heading off to Los Angeles next week. It’s not an official tournament or anything, but it will be interesting to see whether Kotooshu can keep up his current form. And I guess getting away from the media frenzy surrounding the Asashoryu/Hakuho thing in Japan will do everyone some good.
Final bit of sumo news. Kotooshu has begun a blog. It’s almost entirely in hiragana, so it should be readable with very basic Japanese knowledge. I know how much of a pain this whole blogging business is, so I don’t know if he’ll be able to maintain it, but if he does it should be a fun read.