Grappling for the Gods

Question: What Japanese practice evolved from an ancient religious ritual performed for the entertainment of divine spirits, symbolizing humans grappling with evil?

Answer: Sumo wrestling.

Yes, the sport in which two comically large, nearly naked men try and shove each other out of a preposterously small ring has deeply spiritual roots. Most rituals associated with Shinto, the native religion of Japan, involve the theme of purification. In ancient times, sumo symbolized man overcoming evil, and bouts were more akin to dances than sport, performed to entertain divine spirits known as kami.

Many Shinto symbols live on in modern-day sumo. The canopy of the ring evokes a Shinto shrine, the referee wears the garb of a priest, and salt is tossed before each match to purify the ring. The leg stomping at the beginning of a bout is believed to drive out evil spirits. On the day before each tournament, officials perform even more elaborate rituals, in which salt, kelp, dried squid, and chestnuts are buried in the center of the ring as a blessing, and sake is poured onto the ring’s boundary as an offering to the gods. And that’s just to name a few. In fact, nearly every aspect of the sport is derived from Shinto traditions.

All that aside, there’s plenty about sumo that seems decidedly less divine.

• The anti-geisha: One could feasibly replace the protagonist of Memoirs of a Geisha with a young sumo wrestler and change little about the plot. Wrestlers live together in training stables, where their lives are ruled by hierarchy. While the best wrestlers relax, the most inexperienced trainees are performing chores—which can be as demeaning as massaging the girth of a higher-ranking stablemate. They even dress according to their rank, with the lowliest forced to wear only a light robe and clunky wooden sandals—even in the winter, and even in public.
• National pride: Professional sumo is practiced only in Japan—but in an odd buck of tradition, wrestlers of other nationalities are allowed to participate. In the 1990s, the Japan Sumo Association began to regret their inclusivity, as foreign-born wrestlers snagged most of the top titles. In fact, after 2006, Japan fell into a shameful losing streak, which finally ended in January of 2016 when a Japanese wrestler won a major tournament for the first time in a decade. To combat the international juggernaut (which is mostly led by Mongolians), the association now limits the number of foreign-born wrestlers to just one per stable.
• Bulk up: While it may not appear so to the untrained eye, sumo involves a great deal of athleticism. There’s a lot of muscle hiding underneath all that fat. Still, size does matter, with the ideal weight of a wrestler ranging from 400 to 600 pounds. Considering the thin build of the average Japanese person, sumo wrestlers have to eat their way there. Ever heard the theory that eating breakfast keeps you thin? Sumo wrestlers skip it. They consume their 20,000 calories per day in two massive meals, one of which often consists of chankonabe—an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink stew of vegetables, meat, fish, and tofu. Top it off with several bowls of rice and free-flowing beer, and you’ve got a recipe for rapid weight gain. Oh, and after lunch, the wrestlers are required to nap for several hours—just for that extra metabolic buzzkill.
• Health hazards: Not surprisingly, in our modern era of preventative care and superfoods, the sumo lifestyle is oft maligned for its apparent disregard for the health of its participants. On average, the life expectancy of a sumo wrestler is ten years less than that of an average Japanese male. But the jury’s still out, as a good deal of a wrestler’s girth does come from muscle, and the massive meals they eat contain lots of healthy, lean protein. In fact, studies have shown that overall fitness trumps adiposity when it comes to mortality; fat is fine, as long as you put in regular workouts. Still, we don’t recommend taking lifestyle advice from a sumo wrestler—though the prospect of chankonabe and a beer does sound awfully tempting right now.