Two giants stared each other down before colliding with a dull thud. After years on the sidelines, sumo is back center stage as part of Japan’s soft power arsenal overseas.
Behind the scenes at the New Year Grand Sumo Tournament that ended on Sunday last week in Tokyo, preparations were already being made for a tour of Paris in June, following a stop in London last year.
The last time sumo wrestlers traveled to France was in 1995, when such tours were common, but they have become something of a rarity in recent years.
Photo: AFP
Before last year’s visit to London’s Royal Albert Hall, the previous time the Japan Sumo Association (JSA) held a tournament overseas was in Las Vegas in 2005.
Using the hulking wrestlers as ambassadors is a long-established practice.
As early as 1854, they displayed their strength before Commodore Matthew Perry, sent by the US to secure Japan’s diplomatic and commercial opening after two centuries of isolation.
In his journal, Perry described the performance as “barbaric,” performed by wrestlers “more like bulls than humans.”
Perry “observed everything about Japan from a position of almost total ignorance of the country,” Penn State University Asian studies professor Jessamyn Abel said.
Today, by contrast, “for a spectator who already thinks Japan is ‘cool’, sumo just reinforces” that idea, she added.
Japan has understood this well, Waseda University School of Sport Sciences associate professor Kosuke Takata said.
“Government agencies for sport and tourism are seeking to promote ‘martial arts tourism,’ not only sumo, but also kendo and karate,” he said.
Such tours continued throughout the 20th century in the US, Europe, the Soviet Union and China, complementing Japanese diplomacy during the Cold War.
In 1973, wrestlers traveled to Beijing to celebrate the previous year’s establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) China.
China, in turn, exercised its “panda diplomacy” by sending two bears to Tokyo.
With relations now at a low point — Japan’s last two pandas returned to China on Tuesday — a sumo tour would no longer have the same impact, University of Vermont history professor Erik Esselstrom said.
At the time, China “was relatively weak and Japan quite strong” economically, and the two countries were “in a moment of rediscovery,” he said.
Overseas trips became rare over the past two decades as the sumo association refocused on its domestic audiences while the sport’s popularity waned, partly due to a series of scandals.
Yasutoshi Nakadachi, a former wrestler and organizer of the Paris trip, said the JSA was in a “complicated situation,” and also had a lack of interest from foreign countries.
The context is now very different, with Japan welcoming a record number of tourists last year.
Overseas visitors are increasingly eager to see sumo, and tournaments in Japan are regularly sold out.
David Rothschild, promoter of the Paris tournament, recalled approaching the sumo association about 10 years ago, but received no response until 2023.
“After many exchanges, everything sped up: In a month we had practically done everything,” he said.
The JSA’s requirement?
“Sumo must always be considered a tradition. It’s not just a sport and it’s not entertainment,” Rothschild said. “In every discussion they wanted to make sure I wouldn’t do anything inappropriate, that I would be respectful.”
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