Y is for...

(this is almost
a "Y", isn't it?)

Yokozuna

SUMO!!!

I haven’t written about sumo in a long time!

But now I’m going to… because Y, dammit.  :-)

When I first started watching sumo, I was intrigued but also baffled. As with any new sport, you’re lost without somebody to explain what the heck is going on, but I was watching Japanese TV programs, so the commentary in Japanese wasn’t helping me (I never got past “kore wa”...,) and none of the people I lived with were curious enough to have learned the details. I tried bookstores, libraries… and kept coming up empty handed. Oddly enough, it wasn’t until I moved back to New England that I was able to find some information. My favorite source is Mina Hall’s The Big Book of Sumo, which I have relied on heavily for this little story about yokozuna… 

Yokozuna is the highest rank in the world of sumo. 

(i.e. the big guys wearing the huge white belts with giant rick-rack hanging off 'em.) 

Sumo ranking is a fluid pyramidal hierarchy, with the wrestlers moving up and down through the ranks, according to their wins and losses. As the ranks increase, the number of wrestlers in them decreases, until you finally get to yokozuna. 

There are generally only 1-3 yokozuna at a time and, interestingly, sometimes there aren’t any… because you achieve the rank of yokozuna based not only on the concrete factors of power and skill, but also by demonstrating that you possess dignity and grace. Since this is a subjective qualification, there have been times when the Yokozuna Deliberation Council has simply found no one to recommend to the Sumo Association for promotion. (As of 2014, there had only been a total of 71 yokozuna since formal record keeping began in 1789.) 

It’s a very difficult rank to attain (only about 1 in 900 wrestlers makes it to yokozuna) but once you’re there, you get to stay. Yokozuna cannot be demoted, but they are expected to retire when they can no longer compete at the level of performance expected of the top dog.

After a yokozuna’s promotion is approved, there is a formal acceptance ceremony, which will be the first time a yokozuna wears a tsuna, (the big funky white belt.) Those belts, which weigh anything from 30 up to 44 pounds and contain all kinds of padding and copper wiring, are made for the new initiate by the other wrestlers in his stable. It is expected to be sparkling white at all times, so the wrestlers wear towels and white gloves while weaving it, so as not to get it dirty. (They're purely ceremonial, so they aren't worn to wrestle in...)

After the yokozuna is formally installed, he will then perform his first dohyo-iri, which is the ring-entering ceremony in which the yokozuna calls on the gods and chases away demons by clapping his hands and stomping his feet.
This same ceremony opens every sumo tournament.

Then everybody puts away the big belts and fancy skirts and gets down to wrasslin’!! ;-)