Sumo Exposed: The Invention Of Tradition In Japan's National Sport

27 Pages 6746 Words

s with facets of Japanese culture claims that,

Sumo, or Japanese wrestling, is an art of exercising the body and strength in a way peculiar to the Japanese race. That Sumo is a Japanese national sport is a matter of common sense to the Japanese people, but that is not sufficient. It is more appropriate to add that it has been so since the beginning of the Japanese race … [Sumo] has been in existence among the Japanese people since the origin of their race. The art of Sumo may be said, therefore, to run in the very blood of the Japanese people (Hikoyama 1940:9,12).

It has become "common sense" nowadays to disregard such primordialist racial claims to the origins of cultural symbols or practices (e.g. Sumo) as crass – and faulty – misrepresentations. However, because sumo nowadays is performed so often and so consistently as a ritual embodying symbols that represent "old Japan," it is easily seen as a truly remarkable living legacy of the past. From the dohyo matsuri (ring consecration ceremony) that takes place on the day before a sumo tournament, to the ganbai uchiwa ("war" fan) wielded by the gyoji (referees), to the tsuna (white rope-like belt) worn by the yokozuna (Grand Champions), to the purification ritual of spraying salt on the ring before each bout – the rich body of symbols in sumo are drawn from and represent pre-modern Japan. In identifying with such symbols, the Japanese are reaffirming their cultural identity, implicitly or explicitly assuming a unilinear inheritance from "old" Japan (N1) that has made sumo a true "realm of tradition" in which symbols and beliefs from Japan’s distant past (going back to the days of the Kojiki) have survived, despite numerous transformations and adaptations.

Such an assumption is problematic, however. In a recent study Vlastos shows that the most prevalent (and a problematic) way of looking at tradition is as a set of cultural practices of the past persisting into the pre...