Sumo

Sumo Vixens is a PG-13 erotica bit. Kei Mizutani is a leading j-porn star. Basic premise is a bunch of gals, in psudo-sumo thongs wiggle around. Good for some T&A, try ESPN if you want real wrestling though.

Or, so I hear. :D
 
Yes, my sister got me Mina Hall's _The Big Book of Sumo_ for Christmas. It's pretty good. I can give you a better summary, say a table of contents sort of thing, later if you want one. It appears to cover just about everything. What I can think of offhand -- history and background, the rituals performed during matches and such with meanings behind them, the ranking system, moving up, privleges of higher ranks, a few popular winning techniques are described and pictured, info on hairdressing, making a yokozuna's formal belt, translations of fighting names (they normally don't use their real names), info about the referees and some other people, and there are even a couple of recipes for chanko and a section about seeing sumo live (like local stores and good places to stand to watch the wrestlers enter the stadium). And the line drawings of wrestlers are kind of cute, too. :) There's not a whole lot about any individual wrestlers except four (I think) who are originally from Hawaii. I suppose it is on the basic side, but it's a good general book on sumo. I found lots of interesting bits of information in it.

Oh, Kaith is right about ESPN (or ESPN2). Every now and then they have a program I think they call Sumo Digest which shows a couple of matches from each day of a tournament. If you want more than that, I can give you a link to a web site that contains movies of the matches from most of the tournaments over the last two years. The January 2002 basho just finished -- Tochiazuma won the tournament in his debut as an Ozeki (2nd highest rank). He went 13-2 and won a playoff against Chioytaikai for the championship.
 
Dronak,

Please post that link! I've been getting my sumo info from Mainichi Daily News's English site, which doesn't contain any videos that I know of. ESPN covers sumo, but their scheduling for sports such as sumo an MA-related stuff is flaky at best.

Cthulhu
 
Sure. Here it is: http://www.oz.net/~drc/sumomovies/movies.html

The person who puts up these movies does so semi-anonymously I think, so the site isn't exactly well known. A quote from the page: "These are provided for the personal, non-commercial use of fans unable to watch sumo in a timely manner by other means." (Yes, it's bold and underlined on the site.) I watch and save the movies from here supplement it with a bit of info from the official sumo site, http://www.sumo.or.jp/eng/index.php and/or rec.sport.sumo. Another site with some nice written reports and a few photos is the Sumo Now! section of http://www.sumoweb.com/ My web page has links to a few other sites I like, but I don't use them all that much. I'll provide them if you want them though.

I've been following sumo more closely since I found stuff available on the web, but always kind of enjoyed it. I'm certainly glad I found the site with movies because otherwise I'd be stuck with only what ESPN shows which generally isn't a lot. This site also has some interesting non-match videos, like some rituals and early movies of Akebono (since he retired). Since I'm new to practicing martial arts, I'm glad I can pass along some spectator info for sumo. :)
 
Thanks Dronak! I looked at the pages at Amazon's web site but was hoping for a better informed opinion. Can I take it that you recommend this book, then? I have nothing on my shelf that covers Sumo and am looking to fill that gap.
 
Because I tend to float around the board when I'm here, I saw your comment, arnisador, after I posted my other message but while I was still here, so I'll reply now. :) Yes, I'd recommend the book. Looking at Amazon again, I see that they have a few sample pages including the table of contents so you can get a decent idea of what's in the book. That TOC pretty much covers everything in there. I don't know how many English language books on sumo are available. This is one of the few I know of that's easily obtainable. As noted, I think it is on the basic side, but that seems to be the point -- a nice, general introduction to the sport. I think it would be a good book to start with, but that's just my opinion. Everyone thinks differently, so take this for what it's worth to you.
 
Thanks Dronak. You've seen the whole book so your recommendation is worthwhile!
 
Many thanks, Dronak! Yet another URL to clutter my bookmark list :)

Another book on sumo I enjoyed: Rikishi. Probably not as in depth as others, but I liked it, so what the hell :D

Cthulhu
 
No problem, Cthulhu. Actually, part of the reason I created my own web pages was to have a place to keep my favorite sites without having an excessively long bookmark list on my browser. :) I do still keep some bookmarks, but they're things I either use less frequently or just didn't want to give a section to on my web page (e.g. simple pages made for my personal use). Enjoy the sumo movies, there's some good stuff there.

One that sticks out in my memory is a match between Kaio and Musashimaru where Kaio beat the yokozuna via ippon-zeoi, an over the shoulder throw. OK, he didn't really throw him over, but that's the closest kimarite to what he did. Doing a quick look-up, that was from day 14 of the 2000 Kyushu basho. Another interesting kimarite match is up there, from day 4 of this 2002 Hatsu basho that just finished. It's from the sandanme divison (the 4th major division IIRC) and shows the tasukizori kimarite, something that resembles getting the opponent into a fireman's carry and then leaning back to dump him on the ground. I'm sure you'll find plenty of interesting things there as you go through the site.

I know what you mean, arnisador. It can be hard to tell what a book is like from a few sample pages. It does help to have the opinion of someone who has read the whole thing. You can still get differing opinions on the same book just because different people like different things. I'm glad to be of help though.

[Approaching 60 posts and an Orange Belt. :) ]
 
I think I've read something somewhere about sumo's influence on other arts (or maybe the other way around). Unfortunately I can't remember any real details. I took a quick skim of a book I have that's sort of a descriptive info of lots of martial arts and Mina Hall's sumo book. The only thing that I could find was a note in Hall's book about early sumo being a combination of wrestling, boxing, and judo. Oops, wait a second, it also says that many of the wrestling techniques were used to force and enemy to the ground and from this jujitsu developed. I guess that's what I remember seeing. It's not much, but that's all I could find on hand right now.
 
Yeah, it does seem a little strange. I think I've seen something about it on TV once. The first time I skimmed through the articla, I nearly missed the reason and thought it didn't explain why this ritual was done. BTW, if you don't feel like looking at the article (which is short), basically parents let sumo wrestlers shake their babies until they cry because "in Japan, tradition has it that the loudest, most tearful baby, will grow up strong and healthy." Well, you know, every country has its own set of traditions that probably seem odd to everyone else in the world. :)
 
I know the thread has been basically dead for about a month, but since there's at least some interest in sumo here, I figured I'd go ahead and post this. The next basho will be starting in less than two weeks, March 10-24. You can get some more details such as rikishi's rankings from the Nihon Sumo Kyoki page at http://www.sumo.or.jp/eng/index.php (that's the English language page). Unfortunately, if history is any indicator, the Sumo Movies web page link I provided earlier won't have the March tournament. Still I'm sure you can get some text reports and such if you're interested in following the event.
 
Thanks for the heads up, Dronak! I don't have the link on me, but Mainichi Daily News's English site should run day-by-day summaries of the action.

Do you know if Takanohana is going to be in this Basho?

Cthulhu
 
Regarding Takanohana, I don't think they've come to a final decision yet, but from what I've heard it appears that he's probably going to miss this one, too. I think that would make 5 consecutive basho and I believe that would be a new record. Apparently it's taking longer to recover from the injury he has/had (I forget what) than expected. As far as ESPN(2) covering this basho, I don't know if they will or not. Since the Sumo Digest program is a sort of highlights show, they wouldn't be able to make it until after the basho has ended. If they do make those shows shortly after the basho ends, my guess would be that it wouldn't be on TV until early April at the earliest. But I really don't know how ESPN(2) works their sumo coverage.
 
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