There is an organization on base called Information, Tickets and Travel (ITT) that schedules trips. We have used them a few times in the past, but this time they were scheduling a trip to Tokyo to see the May Sumo tournament! We started the day in the Ryogoku district at the newly renovated Edo-Tokyo museum. This is a large museum with many dioramas depicting life in the late 1800s during the Meiji Restoration period of Japanese history. Basically, Japan had been a feudal state operating under samurai control for hundreds of years, but then when Commodore Perry and his black ships sailed into Edo Bay, the Japanese realized they had become historic relics compared to modern war fighting, and if they didn’t do anything they’d become a colony or vassal state like they’d seen happen with China. The emperor at the time reasserted control of the country and modernized Japan incredibly rapidly from guys is armor with swords riding around on horseback into the industrial behemoth they became that could take on the Russian Imperial Army just a few short decades later, and ultimately leading to WWII.
This museum has dioramas and other period reflections showing what life was like during this tumultuous time. The name change of Edo to Tokyo is somewhat interesting. Historically, the capital had been in Kyoto (京都) which those kanji translate roughly Capital Capital, as Japan had seen its Emperor as a central ruler for the world that was known. Kyoto was also full of conservatives that thought the same, and didn’t want anything to change their way of life or what’s worked – at the time, for roughly 1500 years of recorded Japanese history. Why change anything? Well, as mentioned, the arrival of the ships gave the Emperor the knowledge that they had to change. At the time, Edo (江戸) was a marshy region that was perfectly setup for trade, being at the mouth of a massive natural harbor (the kanji there mean like entry to the river, so basically a port). There’s a famous story where the Emperor goes on a “brief visit” to Edo, but then renames it Tokyo (東京) which means Eastern Capital. The Kyoto-ites are like…wait a minute…and then the Emperor never came back. Tokyo became the capital city seemingly overnight which, you can imagine, led to just massive changes in day to day life. This museum attempts to capture that story, and I highly recommend it.
Erika did her best to replicate the chore of carrying water daily, makes you appreciate a bath! The diorama is of a famous bridge into a trade district where laborers and merchants would gather to trade goods, tell stories, and relax after a long day. I didn’t take too many photos in here, but if you ever visit Tokyo, I very much recommend checking out this museum.
I’m not sure who these people are but this man has fantastic style so I had to snap a few pics! Here you can see the Rikishi (力士), the wrestlers, walking to the Kokugikan (国技館), the National Sumo Hall to begin that day of the tournament.
This is the Natsu Basho, famously held in Ryogoku, Tokyo for the last 250 years. The May tournament is something special because it follows Japan’s week of national holidays (called Golden Week), and it’s before the rainy season begins. With Ryogoku being home to many of the Sumo Stables (the houses where the wrestlers or Rikishi live and work and train), this means that the whole district comes alive with tourists, locals, and wresters roaming the area in their traditional kimono outfits. It’s very fun to see, and almost impossible to get tickets, which is why ITT is so helpful!
Sometimes the matches go very quickly, as you can see in this video above! Each tournament lasts the same time – 15 days, and in the tournament wresters will all compete to move up ranks. When a wrester wins a match, he gets money from the sponsors of that match, which can range from thousands to as much as tens of thousands of dollars for a very highly anticipated match. A wrestler that does well over the 15 days (each wrestler has one match per day) can win upwards of $50,000 – not bad for two weeks worth of work, but a far cry from US sports.
These wrestlers can weigh upwards of 300 lbs, but are built like tanks. There are funny videos you can find of NFL players getting into the ring with them, and then unable to move them. They train all day to push push push! And you can see how flexible they are still with all that mass. Some of them are able to lift their legs nearly 180 degrees straight up – amazing!
The above video shows one of these matches where it’s not just about strength and skill, but stamina as well. Pushing with all you’ve got for more than a few seconds will tire out most people – imaging doing it for several minutes! Phew!
I tried to get some shots after the match so you can see that the whole bottom floor of seating is on cushions on the floor. I have done that before, and it is not very comfortable! I am used to chairs, but the Japanese will very comfortably sit like this for hours. The ring in the middle is called the dohyo (土俵) and is constructed from clay, straw, and fine sand, and weighs something like 100,000 lbs. It is built by hand before every 15-day tournament. There are videos on YouTube showing this process as well!
After the tournament we walked around for a bit and I got some shots of the city. I think these flag banners are sponsors of the tournament, but I’m not sure.
As we headed back to the hotel, we got some night shots of the city. The Skytree disappearing into the clouds like that is pretty cool I thought. You can really see here in these black and whites just how clean most of the city is. Tokyo is an anomaly in that it’s a very dense, heavily populated city, but most of it is generally quiet, clean, and fairly serene. Honking horns in Japan is illegal except for emergency purposes, so even streets packed with cars are for the most part, generally pretty quiet. I still haven’t quite figured out how there’s no trash but also no trash cans anywhere, but they make it work.
If you’re at all interested in Sumo, the NHK World channel on YouTube will post highlights from the tournaments every day that are free to watch, and have English narration kind of explaining the rules and the tournament. It is fun to pick your favorite wrestlers and then cheer for them. There is a wrestler from Okinawa who we always cheer for, and we actually saw him at the mall the other day, haha. A story for another time…anyways, thanks for reading!