I saw my first sumo match on Saturday and couldn't get enough of it for the rest of the weekend.
Never in my life have I asked an athlete for an autograph. Not even my baseball heroes of childhood. Yesterday afternoon, I broke with that tradition. I unabashedly asked Kawabe-san of Meiji-Nakano High School Tokyo for his autograph after he won the weekend tournament. Kawabe is about 6'1" 155 pounds and he beat guys twice his size! Morishige and Mikamo and Takei are all way bigger than Kawabe but he gets really low and gets the big guys off balance. He looks like a Daddy Long Legs spider: all legs. When he was introduced at the demonstration match on Saturday, Nancy quickly dubbed him "Spider Boy".
After Spider Boy, my favorite was Ito, the team captain. Ito has charisma, star quality. He plays to the crowd. He and Morishige led the warm-ups before the demonstration. Watching 300 lb. guys balance on one leg, stomp, balance on the other leg, stomp, do a split and stretch forward flat on the mat wowed the audience. I started to get inspired to maybe start tai chi or something again.
After warm-ups, the boys demonstrated various sumo techniques so we'd know what to watch for in the matches. One of the freshmen got hurt demonstrating a tripping technique and was out for the remainder of the weekend with ligament damage. I felt bad for the kid. The coach waited until the demonstration was over to take the kid to the hospital. I saw him later that night at the Festival of Drums with crutches and a knee brace wincing when he came down the few steps from the VIPs grandstand. Actually, he screamed, but I wasn't gonna say that. Anyway, he was clearly hurting on Saturday night. By Sunday afternoon he seemed to be getting around better on crutches and did manage to stand up to be introduced at the beginning of the tournament.
The demonstration matches reminded me a lot of push-hands practice. It made me want to get back to that. The object of the sport is to push your opponent out of the ring or onto the floor. The principles of lowering your center and trying to feel where the opponent's center is seemed to apply here and I could see Kawabe in particular testing for the center as he pushed Takei. By the end of Saturday's demonstration I couldn't wait 'til the Sunday tournament.
I got up extra early to make sure I had plenty of time to get breakfast and drive all the way back to Newport, with a stop at the Barrington flamingos, and get a good parking space near Freebody park. I made it just in time for the introductions. This time the referee was all dressed up in white pants, white shirt, and white gloves. The sumotori were all lined up looking very serious. The announcer explained the rules to us again and told us to cheer by calling out the name of the one we wanted to win. Ito and Morishige proved very popular! At one point I was yelling for Ito and Nancy was yelling for Morishige so we kind of canceled each other out. But for the final match, everyone in the place was screaming Ka-wa-be! Kaaaawaaabe! Especially the children. When Kawabe knocked Morishige out of the ring I was on my feet whooping as loud as I could. The crowd went wild!
Local children were invited into the dohyo to try their hand a pushing the sumotori out. The sumotori had a great time with this. Takei picked up a little blond boy and whirled him around. A little black girl with corn rowed hair pushed Morishige around. quite a bit. The kids (Newport kids and sumotori) clearly enjoyed themselves.
After the medal ceremony (Kawabe got a medal, a Newport Tile, and a pen), Ito (as team captain) presented 15 mawashi (sumo belts) to the city of Newport so they can start a sumo club. When all the formalities were done, the announcer casually said the sumotori would be available for pictures and autographs. Kids of all ages and races and classes swarmed onto the field. The little girl with the corn rowed hair borrowed my pen to get Kawabe's autograph, and Morishige's, and Takei's and Mikamo's and Ito's... I got Kawabe and Morishige and Ito to sign my Black Ships Festival poster. The officials had a hard time clearing sumo fans off the field so they could start the kendo demonstration.