A Beginner's Guide to Sumo Wrestling

Sumo wrestling originated in Japan over 1,500 years ago and incorporates Shinto ritual. Over several hundred years, sumo developed into entertainment for the royal court and eventually spread to the masses. Today, sumo is Japan's kokugi, or national sport, representing many of the ideals and traditions of Japanese culture.

Contrary to widespread opinion, sumo wrestlers are not exceedingly obese. In fact, because the sport requires a great deal of power, dexterity, and technique, its athletes, or rikishi, are generally quite muscular. To increase his strength and flexibility, a wrestler will perform hundreds of shiko, an exercise where he lifts one leg high in the air, balances on the other, and then stomps. From the shiko position, every sumo must also be able to fall into a full split. The training regimen is so grueling that most recruits don't even last a year.

A sumo match has a few basic rules. You must either force your opponent out of the 15-foot diameter ring (dohyo), or make him touch the ground with any part of his body other than the soles of his feet. You may not punch, gouge, kick, or pull hair, but slapping and tripping are allowed. There are over 70 recognized kimarite, or winning techniques, such as forward force-out, over-arm throw, and forward thrust. The sumo belt, or mawashi, provides a useful fulcrum for twisting or flipping in many of these techniques. Three judges and a courtside referee oversee the match and determine the winner.

Sumo wrestling in the US, highlighted by the US Sumo Open, differs from traditional sumo in several notable ways. The competition is a daylong elimination tournament, rather than the 15-day affairs that take place across Japan. The wrestlers are also amateur athletes, and thus do not fully conform to the traditional sumo lifestyle. But because it is possible for an amateur wrestler to graduate to the professional level, the competition is still very serious. Many of professional sumo's current top-division wrestlers began as amateurs. And many of the amateur athletes are working to get sumo accepted as an official Olympic sport.