Blood-shot eyes fixed menacingly on their foe and snorting furiously, two giant bulls smash into each other with shuddering force: In Japanese bullfighting, matadors need not apply.
Tongues hanging out and foam dripping from their mouths, the sweat-soaked beasts lock horns as barefooted handlers slap them on the backside and scream encouragement, risking life and limb beside the bovine battering rams, many of which weigh well over a tonne.
While the Spanish corrida faces mounting pressure from animal rights activists after being banned in Catalonia in the past few years, bullfighting on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa continues to attract big crowds, including families with small children, who peer excitedly through the metal bars at the spectacle just feet away.
Photo: AFP
A bloodless spectator sport dating back hundreds of years also known as bull sumo, champion prizefighters are called yokozuna — like Japan’s sumo champions — and lead a pampered life.
“In Spain, the fight ends with the matador killing the animal,” bullfighting historian Kuniharu Miyagi said at a competition in the Okinawan town of Uruma. “Here, if a bull gets frightened and loses its courage, the fight is over and both bulls, winner and loser, get to go home.
“We don’t feel bullfighting is cruel in Okinawa,” Miyagi added. “It’s a way of life. Farmers used to bring their bulls together to fight for amusement. It takes five years to prepare a bull to fight, then it fights for at least five or six years. Cows that provide us with juicy steaks are slaughtered within a couple of years. Fighting bulls live far longer and in considerable luxury. Owners want their bulls to win, so they spoil them with good food and give them a comfortable home environment to frolic in. Yokozuna bulls even retire to stud, so they have a happy old life.”
Bullfighting in Japan can be traced back almost 800 years, when it was held as entertainment for the deposed Emperor Gotoba following his exile to the western Oki islands, where it is still practiced today. It also takes place in the Iwate and Niigata regions of northern Japan, as well as remote areas stretching down to Okinawa.
Similar styles of bullfighting are also found in South Korea, Turkey, the Balkans, the Persian Gulf and South America.
Called ushi-orase (literally “bullfight”) in the local Okinawan dialect, the sport is steeped in Japanese culture, with purifying salt scattered and rice wine poured on the sandy ring to ward off evil spirits.
Hosed down with cold water and bellowing fiercely before doing combat, bulls can take more than 30 minutes to win by barging their opponent into the fence or forcing him to run away. The seco bull handlers, who nimbly jump from side to side to avoid being gored, dote unashamedly on their animals.
“They’re part of the family,” said Yuji Tamanaha, a third-generation handler. “They’re cute, aren’t they? Hand-feeding them everyday, you form a loving bond. My wife and I don’t have children, so our bull is like a kid to us. He’s very friendly. He likes to lick visitors.”
Cute or not, fights can be brutal, the loser often sent crashing against the bars in a shower of dirt as fans dive for cover. Many bulls never recover from a heavy defeat — on this day a yokozuna called “Samurai” took one look at a brooding opponent tipping the scales at 1,100kg and beat a hasty retreat, so terrified he attempted to jump the fence.
“I come to the cow shed at five in the morning everyday,” Moriaki Iha said. “I mow grass to feed them, clean up. I spend more than half my day with the cows. My wife thinks I’m daft. It’s a miracle she hasn’t left me.”
“Two bulls weighing a tonne smashing into each other is just magical,” he said.
Iha said that owners go to bizarre lengths to win.
“I give my bull Okinawan tea before he fights,” he said. “It’s got caffeine in it, so it acts like a stimulant. There are no doping rules in bullfighting, so it’s fine. Everyone has their own secret tricks.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier