"They do not have any rough, noisy, and loud pastimes except
wrestling, which they practice as an exercise and art for war."
- João Rodrigues (1561 - 1633)
This Island of Japon
Some practitioners of pre-modern Japanese martial arts - koryū - augment their training with some form of combat sport practice in order to add "live" or "freestyle" fighting, as many koryū either eschew 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 or historical European art with sparring. And jūjutsu, where people tend to study judo or, increasingly BJJ ("Brazilian" Jiujitsu). 1
I've done Judo and jiujitu (to black belt level), but explored sumō as well. 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 grappling as a warmup before practicing close combat kata. To this day, when illustrating certain aspects of training, even with the school's weaponry, we will drop the weapons and come to grips sumō style.
Later, when studying jiujitsu with Tim Cartmell, I learned some of his tachiwaza (standing techniques) and bodywork exercises were influenced by sumō, which he had practiced with former pros. 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. 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 power often trumps prowess. Yet if good enough, in that critical moment, technique trumps power. In my professional life I have been in several knock-down drag out fights, and some hand-to-hand combat with people trying to seriously injure me, and only sumō has come close to that pure collision of fighting spirit, technical skill, and physical organization ( 心技体 ).
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 seems to have been 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 practice during deployments, even wrestling with locals who performed shrine sumō. Eventually groups of full-time wrestlers arose within the provinces of Japan, 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 where Nobunaga sponsored sumō tournaments.
Sumō sometimes was conducted publicly with wrestlers being challenged by onlookers, but evolved to performances where professional wrestlers would grapple for a paying audience, even at street corners. This was before there was a defined "ring" (dohyo), and there was no pushing out, so the goal of bouts was wrestling until the opponent "could not get back up," which could be a serious matter. 4 Over the centuries this kind of "street sumō" was repeatedly banned, as it attracted gambling and rowdy crowds and violence often broke out among spectators, and even between spectators and the wrestlers.
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 empower them in a way that Judo or jiujitsu does not. There is a different 'feel' than with the latter disciplines, which in turn informs the interpretation and performance of waza within close combat patterns.
Perhaps sumō is too uncomfortable for some to contemplate - what with the loincloths (mawashi) and all - or perhaps its because of the reasons noted above: mentality meeting physicality, nowhere to hide from naked power, and everything finishing so quickly it's hard to rationalize away. One cannot say "well, that's not combat" after being dominated so rapidly and with such finality. 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 just 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 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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