In the middle of a crowded restaurant in Tokyo, two wrestlers indulge in a sumo demonstration to the cheers of guests eager to discover the Japanese national sport, like more and more foreign tourists since the reopening of the Japanese borders.
The Yokozuna Tonkatsu Dosukoi Tanaka restaurant opened last November, a month after restrictions on entry to the archipelago were lifted due to the pandemic. Helped by word of mouth, he plays his sumo shows at lunchtime to sold-out crowds.
To the applause and laughter of the audience, a host comments in English on the action taking place on the “dohyo”, the gigantic clay podium enthroned in the middle of the tables, before inviting the spectators to climb up there to face the one of the colossi.
“When you’re a professional, your life depends on sumo” and you can’t “take it lightly”, says the star of the show, Takayuki Sakuma, 35, who fought until his retirement from sport at the end of 2022 under the name by Jokoryu.
“But to animate the room we add humor. The most important thing is to make sumo appreciated as a culture”, he explains to AFP.
“It was very fun, one of the highlights of our stay” in Japan, smiles Kiernan Riley, a 42-year-old American tourist who came with his family.
“When people come to Japan, they want to see Mount Fuji, they want to see Kyoto, they want to see sumo”, summarizes Jeff, who only wanted to give his first name, founder of BuySumoTickets, an English site facilitating the acquisition of tickets for tournaments and events concerning this sport.
He says he saw his sales explode in 2019, a record year for tourism in the country, before collapsing during the pandemic. But “it didn’t take long for people to come back. In the January tournament we were at 90% of our pre-Covid level and in March at 100%,” he said.
Foreign interest in sumo has been on the rise over the past five to ten years, said John Gunning, sumo commentator on Japan’s state broadcaster NHK.
“But I think the Covid and the lockdowns have given people the opportunity to really experience sumo” on the internet, where the Japan Sumo Association notably launched a YouTube channel in English in 2022.
The “Sanctuary” series airing on Netflix this year has helped the sport reach an even wider audience, he says.
The influx of tourists has also taken tourist professionals offering tours to heyas, the “stables” where wrestlers live and train together, by surprise, as the pandemic has forced many guides to change jobs.
Until 2018-2019, “it was possible to simply arrive in front of a heya and return to watch the morning training, but faced with the influx of visitors, many decided not to accept individual tourists anymore”, says guide trainer Yuriko Kimura.
“I tell guides the importance of showing respect to stables and wrestlers, and of explaining to tourists the missteps to avoid during a visit”, where you generally have to sit still and not speak so as not to disturb the ‘training.
For visitors wishing to get a quick glimpse of the sport, an address circulates on travel forums: that of the Arashio heya, in the very center of Tokyo, which literally offers a window on the world of sumo, a large bay window through which dozens people watch sumo training every day from the streets.
“In the past we didn’t show sumos like this but I think it’s in tune with our times,” comments the heya master, also named Arashio.
Yuka Suzuki, the wife of the former master who had this idea, says that the intention was then to break with the prejudices of the neighborhood on the world of sumo, reputed to be very closed. “But rather than people from the neighborhood, it was visitors from all over the world who started coming.”
She hopes that this influx will encourage the Japanese, who are losing interest in sumo, to rediscover their national sport, an essential condition for its survival, she thinks.
The wrestlers “are young Japanese like the others who enter this somewhat special world and give their all every day”. But, regrets Ms. Suzuki, “fewer and fewer people are choosing this life and sumo is in danger of disappearing”.
08/13/2023 05:38:19 – Tokyo (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
