お相撲さんが来ている: The Sumo are Coming

I’d like you to pause now and take a moment to reflect on the fact that the amount of filtering that happens to the image of an actor who appears in commercials no one in his motherland will see works both ways. Jones-san is a character played by Tommy Lee Jones in a series of humorous advertisements. The character is just as fictitious as it would be in the states, but the actor’s ethos, all the notions and emotions conjured by the sight of him, is drastically reduced. As far as examples go, this is about as minute a difference that can happen as media passes through the cultural filter. So much of the Japanese mindset is lost upon the West, seeping through the cracks spreading under the weight of Western thought, but before anybody starts thinking that I’m railing against my own culture, let me be clear… This is not bad so much as it is sad. Sad because it is unavoidable; the tint applied in transition is a fact of life until the truth in action has been witnessed. No matter how hard anyone tries to explain, including myself, the world is full of different schools of thought that form as old ideologies meld into what is found at this very moment.

 With that in mind, I can now tackle the conflicting conceptions of Sumo wrestling. Sumo is not about who waddles about with the most colossal gut but leverage and techniques that are part of a cultural tradition wholly Japanese (hence the questionable circumstances surrounding the top Sumo wrestler, a Mongol, leaving Japan). Drawing upon my own memories of representations of the typical Sumo wrestler, I see a boulder of a man with eyes burning a hole into his opponent. I recall montages of schools of fat men gorging themselves upon bowl after bowl of white rice. Their chopsticks flinging the specks of white into their gullets, the only competition seemed to be who could eat more gooey mochi or fresh sashimi. The notion that there was something more tangible to the Japanese sport was easy to grasp, but the depth of a Sumo’s devotion and drive eluded me. The petite figure of an every day Japanese man does not lend itself to the explosion of force found between the masses of flesh hurtling towards each other during each Sumo bout. Japanese genes do not naturally produce Sumo on a regular basis, but Sumo exist nonetheless.

Consider the physical change a body must go through in order to become a top NFL superstar. Hours upon hours in gyms and on the practice field beget the giants of the gridiron. On the street, a college or even high school lineman is a sore thumb that draws the eyes of the crowd. Juxtapose this feeling of looking up at a mountain of humanity with your mental renditions of their Far East compatriots. Their biceps are just as strong in a sport requiring an equal amount of finesse and brute strength on par with the Sunday gladiators of the red, white and blue. Are the Sumo fat?... Yes, in the same way that an offensive lineman is fat. Both men’s lives, Eastern and Western, are poured into their sport until the sport itself becomes their lives. To belittle Sumo wrestling and training in the tatters of culture appearing on television screens on this side of the Pacific is to represent American football as nothing more than a glorified competition of shoving. The technique, cultural history and tradition are gone once the Japanese culture becomes entertainment for Americans. Everything that makes Sumo matter is gone.