NEW!
Grand Sumo as a Mirror of Japanese Society
- My magnum opus. This paper was written in my sophomore year (1999), a revised and extended English version of a paper written in Nihonggo a year earlier. At that time, I had just graduated from my Japan-bashing stage to my Japanophile stage, and became a rabid, fainting sumo fan. Whenever a term paper was up I did all I can to slam-bang-force it into a sumo framework. The paper presented here was the most successful--in terms of the absence of mortified comments from the professor involved--so I thought I should upload it for your reading pleasure. =) Long, but worth the pain.

The Groupie
Face to Face with a Legend: My Chiyonofuji Story
I have a story to tell you. It's about this rikishi, a sumo guy named Chiyonofuji. For us die-hard fans, he was the greatest sumo guy to walk the face of the earth. I mean, the greatest ever. Despite the fact that he retired long before I came to Japan, I've managed to watch videos of the guy and read about him in books and magazines. And one fine sunny day, I decided to see him face-to-face...

Watching
Osaka Basho and How Anticipation Killed the Cat
Today, the much anticipated Osaka tournament opened, and I was so excited I made sure that I woke up in the morning to do all the day's chores, which included buying a sack of munchies and candybar six packs to pig on while I watched sumo in my hog heaven of a rabbit hutch. I did the buying with great excitement, and anticipated the eating with even greater excitement, and the matches themselves with the greatest excitement.

Hurting
He Hit Me and It Really Hurt
Sumo guys as a rule expect to get hit violently by their opponents, but they obviously assume that the thrusts will be aimed on their chests, necks and shoulders, not square on the cheek like a true girlfriend-got-mad episode. Sometimes, some guys do slap on the cheek upon rising from their tachiai or crouching position--this move is called hari--but merely to distract the opponent while they aim for a certain position. But I, and most certainly Miyabiya, had never seen such a resounding slap before. Today I got the visual treat of seeing Touki give Miyabi a first-time experience.

Listening
What's in a Voice? Listening to Glorious Rising Sun
If you're a foreigner in Japan who has lived here for a length of time, one of the things you'll notice is how the Japanese male, in keeping up with the otokorashii (manly) tradition, tries to attain that low-pitched voice. And not just that, a 'real' man, of course, is the strong, silent type, so what you get is preferably a guy with a bass voice who rumbles only a few, profound statements while stoically staring into outer space. Needless to say, this male stereotype is strictly lived up to by the sumo guys themselves, who supposedly represent the epitome of Japanese malehood, a living tradition personifying all that is good and fine in the samurai warrior of centuries back.

The Girl
Comfort & Sumo: Desperate Wailings of a Broken-hearted Girl
Last February, my boyfriend--the love of my life and the man I thought I'd be with forever--dumped me. Needless to say, I was totally devastated. I will spare you the pitiful details of what I went through and how terribly I took the break-up. Suffice it to say that it will take me several years to pick up the broken pieces and put myself back together again. Right now I'm looking for every shred of comfort I can find. So I turn to sumo...