interesting web site.

["Rowan Klein" <rowanchan@hotmail.com>]

These articles are written by a Filipino girl who has obviously lived in 
Japan for a while. I haven't read them all yet. The following are from her 
sumo front page listing the articles and basic intros to the 6 or so 
additions so far.

rowan

http://www.claireworks.net/sumo/

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.


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...


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.


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.


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.



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...






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