Sumo takes winding road to the deep north

By James Hardy Daily Yomiuri Sportswriter
Photos by Bradley York Special to The Daily Yomiuri

Jungyo n. a provincial tour (of a strolling company); a tour of the provinces; a tour of the country.

KORIYAMA, Fukushima--It's quiet backstage on the first day of sumo's summer tour. Veterans Tochisakae and Tochinohana chat with visiting family and friends, and one or two other wrestlers are playing on their Nintendos. The middle of the gym, which today is home to Japan's top 66 rikishi, is dominated by a group of eight senior wrestlers playing cards.

Sitting a few meters away and occasionally approached by shy primary school boys asking for autographs, Estonian wrestler Baruto doesn't understand the card game, but he can see that stablemate Satoyama's had enough and is heading back to his futon.

The gym, which normally houses two volleyball courts, is set out like the sumo rankings. Yokozuna Asashoryu and his collection of red and green wooden trunks sits at the top of the hall. He is flanked by the ozeki--Bulgarian Kotooshu is deep in conversation on his mobile phone--while the lower ranked maegashira and jungyo wrestlers spread out across the available space.

This is jungyo. Or at least, this is one aspect of the tours to sumo-deprived regions organized by the Japan Sumo Association in between the six tournaments that form the backbone of the sport's calendar.

The wrestlers spend a lot of time like this, sitting about and waiting for their turn in the ring.

It's Baruto's third jungyo. "The good thing is the training in the morning, but there's a lot of waiting, taking showers, doing photographs, autographs," he says.

Who is he fighting later in the day? "I don't know. I just want to go out and have an easy fight. In tournaments, everyone is a rival; in jungyo, it's different."

Jungyo is different. Although sumo is remarkable for how close the fans can get to their favorite wrestlers, on jungyo that gap gets even smaller.

"Jungyo's purpose is to make sumo more popular," agrees Kotooshu. "It gives those who don't live in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka or Fukuoka a chance to see sumo."

This jungyo is the biggest tour of Tohoku and Hokkaido in years. It starts here, and over the course of a week, meanders from Furano--the self-proclaimed "belly button of Hokkaido"--through the northern island and back to Aomori Prefecture.

For Iwakiyama, who is killing time before his ring ceremony and exhibition bout later in the day, jungyo is part of the reason he became a sumo wrestler.

"I saw jungyo when I was a middle-school student," the Aomori native says. "It was a big experience for me. My favorite wrestler was ozeki Hokutenyu. There was a kind of swagger to his sumo--he was great to watch."

Iwakiyama has been doing these tours for over five years.

"There is a lot of time traveling--we spend four to five hours a day on coaches and waiting around--that's kind of tough. But it's good, you know--we drink and eat together in the evening, and hang out a lot. Plus there is the chance to practice with a lot of different wrestlers, try out different things--see what's going on.

"The first time I came on jungyo I was really nervous. I didn't know what to do, where to go. Now, I am pretty relaxed about everything."

A day of a sumo tournament has a rhythm that cannot be found in any other sport.

In the morning, scrawny teenagers wearing only practice belts scrap in an almost empty arena. As the hours pass, the wrestlers get bigger and better, their mawashi shinier, and the audience drunker and rowdier.

On jungyo, the makeshift venues are crammed from early on with a different crowd--families sharing packed lunches, and young mothers with sons who have just fought a real sumo wrestler. Farmers' cooperatives on sake-fueled binges get progressively more sozzled--their long-suffering wives trying to limit the damage or ignoring the worst. Local boys get roars of approval, and this being jungyo, always win. And just as every day of a "real" tournament culminates in the appearance of the grand champion in the ring, so the biggest cheers--except for the aforementioned hometown heroes--occur when Asashoryu appears on the clay mound.

After the roars, come ripples of expectation. You can feel it when the yokozuna imposes his will on ozeki Hakuho at morning practice in Furano, but the air really trembles when he appears with the white belt that marks him out.

Watching Asashoryu's tsunashime, or rope-tying demonstration, from the back of the arena in Koriyama is Junichi Koike, an English teacher at Nihon University Tohoku High School and head of his school's sumo club.

Although Koike is a big fan, especially of Asashoryu, he's only been to a tournament once.

"So this is a good opportunity for me. It is nice it is an exhibition--not real fighting. It's a sumo festival."

It might be, but it is a festival that predominantly attracts the very old and the very young. Sumo's image problem--that of oversized young men falling over for the entertainment of the silver generation--isn't being challenged by the audience makeup in Koriyama. Koike says that if the sumo association wants to attract more young people, it needs to establish "sumo clubs for middle school kids and hold more jungyo. It is a chance to see the real wrestlers."

It's also a chance for wrestlers to go home. Last year, Kuji in Iwate Prefecture hosted a tournament, mainly to celebrate the success of local boy and former komusubi Tochinohana, who is from Yamagatamura, a village that is part of the city.

"It was really hot," he says, "but there were lots of fans and everyone got into the spirit of it."

Like many top wrestlers, Tochinohana's first experience of jungyo was as a tsukebito--the attendants who are the worker ants of any tour.

"I was a tsukebito many times," the 33-year-old says. "It was really hard carrying all the luggage. Plus, you spend a lot of time running errands and doing odd jobs."

And how about now--how is jungyo life as a sekitori?

"It's still tough," he says smiling. "There is always something to do. But the good things --there are a lot of good things. You get to go a lot of different places, see a lot of different things, meet a lot of people, eat a lot of great food, all that is really fun"

And his favorite destinations for jungyo? "Well, Hokkaido is nice, Okinawa is good too--and of course, going home."

This is the first in a short series about the Japan Sumo Association's annual regional tours. The next installment will focus on the effect of jungyo on host towns and cities.

For Musashimaru, it's all about the dirt

FURANO, Hokkaido--Former yokozuna Musashimaru might not be the star attraction on tour anymore, but his job as a jungyo point man for the Japan Sumo Association ensures life's still pretty tough.

"You guys think I am a wrestler but I'm not," the winner of 12 Emperor's Cups told us as we sat in a backroom at Furano's municipal gymnasium.

"I'm the guy doing the organizing--I'm doing the hard work.

"You've got to get up in the morning, and you only have 10 days to get everything together."

But if the schedule's bad, it's nothing on trying to build a ring good enough for grand sumo. Finding the right kind of dirt, he says, is a nightmare.

"The clay--that's the hard part. And if it rains.....Oh man! You've got to have the clay dry, not wet. If you have it dry, you know, you can add a little bit of water... that's the hard bit."

Making the ring, or dohyo, hasn't changed much in the past 100 years. Shuichiro Nomura, the Furano Tourist Association manager responsible for getting everything in the right place, explained how sumo association staff made the dohyo.

"They started at 8 a.m. and only finished making it at 6 p.m. They hit and shape the dirt with their hands.

"When I asked if they wanted to use a machine, they said it is too powerful so the dirt doesn't harden properly. They really have to do it by hand."

If the dirt is OK and everyone gets to the venue unscathed, then for Musashimaru, "Everything else is easy."

And there are perks. For Musashimaru, not having to wrestle means "there's no pressure on me," and next year, he is organizing the association's tour back home to Hawaii.

And for a former yokozuna like Musashimaru, used to the buzz that comes from being the biggest man in his sport, being asked to run a tournament by the host town is a nice sign he's still a hit with the fans.

"You have guys who have been retired for 10 years, and they haven't been on one yet. Usually when you retire, no one thinks of you. But me, I get to go on tour."

--James Hardy