Bringing Sumō Back
Some practitioners of medieval and early modern Japanese martial arts - koryū bugei - augment their training with some form of combat sport practice in order to experience "live" or "freestyle" fighting, as many koryū either eschew any kind of sparring practice entirely or do not place much emphasis on it. This includes weapons' disciplines, where practitioners may add an art like kendo, more rarely another Asian weapons sparring or historical European art with sparring; and grappling, where people tend to study judo or, increasingly, BJJ (Basically Just Judo, or as it is more popularly called "Brazilian" Jiujitsu). 1
For some time now I've explored sumō instead. While I have been interested in it from very early on, after reading up on Chinese wrestling and sensing a connection between them, I first experienced sumō-like training in Araki-ryū. We would do sumō-style wrestling as a warmup before practicing our combative grappling kata. To this day, when illustrating certain aspects of training, even with the school's weaponry, Ellis will have us drop the weapons and come to grips sumō style.
Later, when studying BJJ with Tim Cartmell, his tachiwaza (standing techniques) and some bodywork exercises were heavily influenced by sumō, which he had also practiced for a time. Tim has always said that "sumō is the most combative grappling sport out there."
After practicing amateur sumō ( amazumo /アマ相撲 ) myself, I had to agree. It is a raw distillation of mentality and physicality unmatched in any other grappling practice. It is my belief that sumō is not only the most combative, but the most honest of the pure grappling arts. Very little margin for error, no weight classes, no "feeling out," no waiting until the opponent gasses or makes a mistake, and pure power often trumps technique unless in that critical moment, if it is good enough, technique trumps power. In my professional life I have been in several knock-down drag out fights, and some hand-to-hand combat with another person trying to seriously injure me, and only sumō has come close to the pure collision of fighting spirit, technical skill, and physical organization ( 心技体 ) that such things engender.
And everything can be over in seconds, just like in the "real thing."
MMA would be similar. In fact Sumō used to be a much rougher affair. "The techniques used by wrestlers were not systematized, and the hard fought matches were similar to mixed martial arts seen today. " 2 Kicking in particular seemed to be a valid technique. Nomi no Sukune ( 野見 宿禰 ), considered a progenitor of sumō, wrestled a man named Kehaya of Taima (Tajima) on the orders of Emperor Suinin. Nomi-no-Sukune broke his ribs and back, or alternatively his groin/testicles, with kicks. Though apocryphal, it speaks to the more open-ended manner of sumō wrestling prior to the early modern period.
During the Sengoku period warrior sumō ( bujinzumō 武人相撲 ) was used for physical training, as "the movements in sumō proved useful training for close combat whereby soldiers would grapple while dressed in body armor." 3 Warriors would wrestle during deployments, even wrestling with locals who performed shrine sumō. Eventually groups of full-time wrestlers arose within the provinces, making their living wrestling for spectators, competing against the retainers of daimyo, and even being employed by daimyo in wrestling stables. Warlord Oda Nobunaga was a fan of sumō and his biographer, in Shinchō-kō ki, documents various occasions Nobunaga sponsored sumō tournaments.
Sumō originally was conducted by wrestlers being challenged by onlookers, but evolved to a performances where professional wrestlers would grapple for a paying audience, even at street corners. Over the centuries this street sumō was repeatedly banned, as it attracted gambling and rowdy crowds where violence often broke out among spectators, and even between spectators and the wrestlers. And before there was a defined "ring," the goal of bouts seems to have been wrestling until the opponent "could not get back up," so this could be a serious matter. 4
The question is this: where did sumō go? Why do modern koryū not embrace this method of wrestling that was THE expression of grappling when the various koryū grappling curriculae were founded, especially in the medieval era and before?
Ellis Amdur has described Araki-ryū torite and kogusoku as "sumō with weapons." After exploring Araki-ryū kata through the lens of sumō, I have found it to not only elucidate the patterns but to empower them in a way that Judo or BJJ or Aikido do not. There is a different 'feel' when grappling is conceptualized and myelinated in the body through Judo, or BJJ, or Aikido, and the varying interpretations have an effect of the interpretation and performance of grappling waza within close combat kata that is apparent.
Perhaps sumō is too uncomfortable for some to embrace - what with the loincloths (mawashi) and all - or perhaps its because of the reasons noted above: mentality meeting physicality, with nowhere to hide from naked power, and everything finishing so quickly is hard to rationalize away. One cannot say "well. that's not combat" when one has been dominated so rapidly and finally. A man pushing you out of the dohyo or slapping you in the face and into the ground would likely do the same to you in "combat," throwing you off a ledge, or through a window, or stomping you into the dust.
Notes:
1. This does not include Aikido, which perhaps many more traditional Japanese martial arts exponents practice. Most aikido does not engage in competitive training. This results in a different kind of downstream effects that will be further explored in this essay.
2. Budō: The Martial Ways of Japan. edited and translated by Alexander Bennett. Nippon Budokan Foundation, 2009.
3. https://sengokujidai.org/culture「文化」/index-of-arts-and-culture「文化·芸術の一覧」/warrior-sumo「武家相撲」/
4. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pM-VByC3vBQ
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