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Grand Sumo
The World of Sumo as a Mirror of Japanese Society: A Look at Sumo History and the Foreign Rikishi 06 January 2002
Welcome to my magnum opus, a product of my student days at the Nagoya University School of Law. Tee hee. The following paper was written in my sophomore year (1999), the longest I've written so far, and is a revised and extended English version of a previous paper written in Nihonggo when I was a freshpersen (wrong spelling intended, for the sake of being PC). At that time, I had just graduated from my Japan-bashing stage into my Japanophile stage, and became a rabid, fainting sumo fan, not to mention getting into other Japanese stuff like enka, J-pop, kyogen, noh, etcetera. Those were the days when I became a sumo groupie (the unfortunate object of attention being the sumo dude Chiyotenzan), and whenever a term paper was up I did all I can to slam-bang-force it into a sumo framework. The paper presented here is the most successful--in terms of the absence of mortified comments from the professor involved--so I thought I should upload it for all the world to see. I know you were expecting something more, um, academic as my magnum opus, but then I've been out of whack since coming to the Land of the Rising Sun. While I have written a lot of term papers in the past four years, almost all of them were written in Nihonggo, and among the few English ones this sumo paper is much more fun to read than, for example, the one that goes "Contemporary Japanese Society's Changing Attitudes Toward Litigation." =)
However, I'll be the first to admit that this sumo paper violates every rule learned in Social Research 101, especially regarding sampling errors, observation methods, and secondary research and analysis, among others. Still, for lack of better material (I tell you, it could have been worse), here you are with my sumo paper. It's quite long and a pain-in-the-@$$ to read, so I won't go as far as saying that it's truly worth the bother for everyone. But I do encourage you to read as far as you can. You'll be happy you did...Har! No, seriously speaking, if you can't stand reading tedious history stuff you might want to skip the first couple of pages and just leap right over to the latter half of Part IV and read on from there. Anyone with an interest--no matter how insignificant--in Japan would find it a rewarding endeavor, if I do say so myself. =)
Comments of the teacher who did the lecture on "Foreign Workers in Japan" for which this paper was written:
"A systematic and humorous study of [sumo]. Unfortunately, most of the paper is irrelevant to the topic I covered for Contemporary Japanese Society. Had I been grading from an [historical] or sociological angle, this essay would have scored over 90%. But alas, your coverage of 'foreign workers in Japan' accounts for no more than 1/4 of this paper. Nevertheless, well-researched, well-written and extremely informative. (from a fellow sumo fan)"
Can't complain. Below is the Table of Contents. You could click on the links to jump to a particular section, or start from the beginning by clicking here. As with the other sumo articles, each page contains original photographs by yours truly. Enjoy reading! (or simply looking at the photos).
Musashimaru receives the championship flag from Kokonoe-oyakata, a living legend and a former great yokozuna.
