Category: Japan – Sports

This is Demon Kokugure, a performer and artist, and serious sumo fan. Here he is doing commentary for NHK’s sumo broadcast (he’s doing a full 5 hours for them, very unusual). Don’t judge this book by the cover, this guy knows his sumo, frontwards and back. I’m looking forward to being able to hear his insight when I watch the DVD recording tonight. (I’ll upload a better image tonight as well.)

The Nihon Sumo Kyokai held a fan appreciation day this past Sunday at the Ryogoku Kokugikan in celebration of their 80th anniversary, and we were 3 of approximately 25,000 fans who showed up for the free event.

There were no bouts, but rather a series of mini-events, various photo exhibits and the like, plus access to some of the facilities at the Kokugikan that are normally off limits to us mere mortals such as the locker rooms. Rikishi were there as well, some just hanging out for photos and autographs, others taking tickets or making mochi. Nothing spectacular, but a nice day out all the same. Though admittedly a free event, it was nice to see so many people in attendance, giving one hope that the recent media buzz Sumo is enjoying, thanks to Asashoryu’s record-breaking year and Kotooshu’s Ozeki promotion, might actually result in increased attendance come the next basho (starting January 8).

(Click on the above photo for more photos from the event).

Yesterday, Futagoyama Oyakata, who wrestled under the name Takanohana from the mid-60’s until 1981, passed away from mouth cancer at the age of 55. His death rated front page mentions of the Tokyo dailies, and retrospective looks amongst Japan’s TV networks. Though not a big man physically, he was able to make it up to Sumo’s second highest rank of Ozeki, and stay at that rank longer than anyone else, past or present (50 bashos, or tournaments, covering a span of roughly 9 years). Due to his good looks and charisma, and his prowess at defeating men much bigger than himself, he was immensely popular during his time, and was known as “The Prince of the Sumo World”.

His passing and the requisite tv reports and retrospectives remind me of the kind of coverage that attended his son, also wrestling under name of Takanohana, when the latter retired from Sumo two years ago, which was the spur that got me interested and quickly hooked on this sport. (Here is my blog entry from that time.) Hopefully in the next few days or so there will be an extended look at his career like the kind I saw for his son, so that I can better understand his sumo and his appeal.

That this prince sired not just one but two boys who would later rise to the rank of Yokozuna (Grand Champion), eclipsing their father, and carry on the Hanada Dynasty, is certainly a big part of the legend. But it is also what, for me, makes the story all the more tragic.

When his two boys, the aforementioned Takanohana (II, for simplicity’s sake) and his brother Wakanohana (III, for the record), entered their father’s heya (stable) at the ages of 15 and 16, respectively, he said in effect, “From now on, I’m no longer your father but your coach,” basically disowning them as children (oyako no en o kiru in Japanese). At Takanohana’s retirement press conference in 2003, he said “Now I hope we can talk to each other like father and son.” Later that year, he was diagnosed with mouth cancer.

When brother Wakanohana retired from Sumo he also left the Japan Sumo Association, cutting his ties with Sumo’s governing body. He was quoted at the time as saying that in no way shape or form would his own sons ever have anything to do with sumo. And when he was asked, after his father’s passing yesterday, what his first image of his father is, he said it was of a coach hitting him during sumo practice.

By all accounts the family is a dysfunctional mess. Even as heya mates and the only brother Yokozuna pair in history, the two brothers were barely on speaking terms. (Their has been some closing of this gap recently, no doubt hastened by their father’s condition, though their interaction, as seen on TV at any rate, is still rather awkward). Their parents divorced in 2001, and if interviews with the pair’s mother (Noriko Fujita, now a TV “talent”) are to be believed, she and her son Takanohana don’t really speak to each other. Conspicuously, she has not been heard from amongst the flurry of family and sumo dignatories interviewed on TV for the last day.

As you would expect, that the elder Takanohana was only 55 when he passed away yesterday has only served to make the story more tragic for the networks. But left unsaid, for now at any rate, is just how young the elder Takanohana was as a father, how much of his adult like was spent not as father but as a taskmaster coach to his two boys, where even to use a phrase like “tough love” would imply too familial a relationship. I suppose he knew what he was doing, leading his boys to the top, creating in the process the “Waka-Taka” boom that so captivated the Japanese public in the 90’s. But at what price?