on this day: 1957

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

Asahi Evening News, Saturday 2nd February 1957

Sumo and Nudity
by Santoro

   It was a question very often asked during the Meiji era (1868-1911):  
how soon will they fade from the face of Japan or which of them the soonest 
- geisha, yakusha (Kabuki actors) and sumo (wrestlers)?
   In the era of "enlightened rule" (Meiji) marking the restoration of the 
Emperor's rule after eight centuries of his political absenteeism, almost 
every custom and institution, every mode of pleasure and entertainment 
identified with the former regime were discredited, suspected, even 
forbidden or "abolished" outright as being out-of-date and "feudalistic."
   And the three "professionals" named were among the first candidates for 
early liquidation. If they were spared or allowed to linger in a 
life-or-death precariousness it was mainly because the Meijians, themselves 
pre-Meiji offspring of feudalism, could not easily overcome their nostalgic 
liking for them.
   Rulers of new Japan, being samurai of middle or lower grades, had a 
hereditary fondness for sumo and also for geisha whom it was their secret 
ambition to patronize if or when they became rich and powerful. As for the 
Kabuki theater it had been the only earthly delight reserved for the "women 
and children" of the plebeian Yedo, and now that they were socially 
emancipated they could not immediately give it up.
   The chief reason these three varieties of "geinin"  ("accomplished ones" 
or public entertainers) were belittled in he early Meiji era was that their 
likes did not exist in the West or that most of the Western foreigners who 
were coming to Japan in increasing numbers as official advisers, 
instructors, technical experts, missionaries, did not approve of them. That 
geisha, many of them on the very fringe of moral respectability, should be 
allowed to attend public functions of high officials and respectable 
citizens, was an unheard-of depravity. Nor was it the custom in the West for 
stage actors to perform female roles as Kabuki yakusha did. Most 
uncompromising was the charge against sumo on account of the state of nudity 
or semi-nudity in which their games were exhibited.

Fear of Nudity
   Some persons including foreign Japonologues, tried to defend the charge 
of immorality against the custom of nudity much prevalent in those days. 
Still remembered is Chamberlain's famous remark that "in Japan is seen but 
not looked at."
   There were three distinct occupations in Yedo days whose votaries were 
permitted or understood to go naked when on duty: carriers of kago (the 
Japanese equivalent of the sedan-chair), servicemen in the public bathhouse 
and firemen. Of these we may find many illustrations in old ukiyoe prints or 
story books. Apart from these "naked workmen," it was not uncommon to see 
men going about all but naked, especially in summer. Nakedness then was 
associated with vulgarity, poverty or roughness of manner rather than with 
immorality. The Japanese saw in nudity a new shame and immorality only in 
the light of the moral ideas and manners learned from the Western nations 
then in the grip of Victorian prudishness. The anti-nudity law issued in 
1871 may be considered as marking an epoch in the evolution of social 
manners in modern Japan.
   The Japanese looseness or indifference in the matter of nudity in public 
must long have been an intolerable eyesore to the foreigners visiting this 
country for the first time, as may be judged by their frequent complaints or 
expostulations printed in the local press. Japanese women were in this 
respect no less culpable than men. Not so very many years ago in the prewar 
period, a young man of 25 or so entered a semi-public bathhouse near Shiba 
Park where Buddhist temples abound and found half a dozen women in the 
bathroom, some washing on the floor, others bathing in the tub. Thinking he 
had blundered into the women's room, he hurriedly turned to go when a 
laughing female voice shouted: "Never mind. Come on. The women's bath is not 
ready yet, so we are using the men's. You must excuse us."

"Naked Rites"
   There are still held at some Shinto shrines the so-called 
"hadaka-gyoji," or "naked rites," like those held at Tsugaru, Akita 
Prefecture on New Year's Day (lunar calendar). The latter consist of a large 
number of stalwart youths, with nothing but loincloths on their bodies, 
waging a sort of tug-of-war in the shrine compound. Some young women, 
viewing the scene, when asked what they thought of it, testified that it was 
a manly, gallant spectacle and they were thrilled at the sight of healthy 
male bodies strained to the high pitch of strength in the teeth of winter 
cold.
   It was not a rare thing in the Meiji era in summer to see women of lower 
social classes walking about in the lanes, if not on the main street, with 
the upper half of their person wholly exposed. If on a hot summer afternoon 
an earthquake of the clock-stopping caliber occurred, many a by-street in 
suburban Tokyo looked like a strip-tease show with women, young and elderly, 
laughing at one another, with nothing but red koshimaki (underskirts) on. 
(By the way, Japanese women, like their Occidental sisters of the eighteenth 
century, had never worn drawers till as late as the year of the great 
earthquake, 1923, when the late Mrs. Tsuneko Gauntlet launched a nationwide 
campaign to make female babies, incidentally also their mothers, wear 
drawers.)

Charms of Sumo
   Enough has been said to show how the Meijians or the more "culture 
minded" of them, had looked down disdainfully on the three aforesaid 
professions as immoral, uncivilized or anachronistic and did all they could 
to "abolish" them. How well or badly hey succeeded you already know but too 
well. It seems the more they were killed the more tenaciously they survived: 
the more they were reformed the more they reverted to the old traditional 
pattern. Leaving geisha and yakusha alone for this once, however, we may 
review sumo a little more, as they have come once again into the limelight 
of public favor thanks to the phenomenal achievement of the 30-year-old 
champion Chiyonoyama in scoring the first "zen-sho" (all-victory-record) in 
years at the January Kuramae tournament.
   All the efforts made by the would-be reformers to "clothe" the sumo 
wrestlers proved a failure. Ironically, it was adjudged that the chief 
justification of sumo was their naked style when wrestling and that clothed 
sumo would be no more sumo than head-shaved bonzes would be bonzes.
   However, the paths of progress they have trodden to reach the 
comparatively stabilized state of prosperity they now enjoy lay across many 
a hill of difficulty. More than once the game of sumo was in a crisis of 
death or survival owing chiefly to the force of public opinion favoring 
modern-style sports and games. But other things have happened to help the 
comeback it made.
   Among the contributory causes of sumo revival can be mentioned: (1) its 
almost immemorially antique origin and the long, numerous traditions it is 
encrusted with, and (2) its universal appeal to the combative instinct of 
the race who, if they are not fighting themselves, must do so vicariously by 
seeing their favorite sumo wrestlers doing it in the ring.
   Another and perhaps the most attractive feature of sumo, endearing 
itself even to women and children, is its gentle or innocuous character or 
its freedom from injury or danger both to wrestlers and spectators, though 
it is essentially a "fighting" game. The rules and customs and code of 
honour, written and unwritten, regulating the conduct of sumo on and off the 
ring are so numerous and complex that one can hardly imagine any game of 
physical contest in which its participants are so tied up hand and foot as 
sumoists are on the ring. However hard or free may be their "keiki" 
(training) in their own camps (it is said to be very severe, even savage at 
times), they are bound with the most squeamish rules of action imaginable 
once they are on the sands. The game is lost if the wrestler places one of 
his legs or the tip of his toe outside the rice-bale-straw-bound ring, 
barely 20 feet in diameter, or if he touches the ground with the palm of his 
hand, even with a single hair on his head, as it is facetiously said.

Seen by Code

   Because it was viewed by Emperors, Shoguns, nay, by the gods themselves, 
it was thought a sacrilege to present any unseemly sight like that, for 
instance, of a man being maimed or injured, even bleeding, in the ring, so 
care was taken through the ages to make show as respectable or stylish as 
possible. Hence the numberless "don'ts" the sumo are bound with, their 
motions and moves being confined to the "48 hands" or their permissible 
variations. But none the less or all the more apparent (to sumo fans) is the 
dead earnestness or fierceness of the combat involved, even when two men are 
locked in a tight grip with no apparent sign of aggressive fight save 
heaving of muscles or dripping of sweat at every pore you see on their 
bodies: the two strengths well matched, each on the qui-vive for the first 
chance to unbalance the equilibrium as the game is decided the moment the 
balance is broken. Thus you will often see a match ending almost the same 
moment the two men close in, which may make one seeing sumo for the first 
time wonder where the sinews of the game may lie.
   Last, but least, their naked state, revealing to sumo lovers the 
mascular glory of men, is the indispensable element of their attraction. 
Nothing can be hidden on the bodies of sumo on the ring: all is fair and 
above board. There can hardly be a scene more enthralling than that of two 
sinewy giants grappling in a fair contest of strength and skill in the open 
view of thousands of people, under the lynx-eyed supervision of half a dozen 
ex-champion "elders," their every move being recorded, painted and reported 
to the ends of the land. Your sumo lovers will aver that sumo-wrestling on 
the ring is a model of what the world of men struggling for honor and 
survival is or should be and that its best use is to afford one a sense of 
diversion, or escape, if for a short time, from the sordid realities of this 
latter-day human society in which so many cowards, knaves, tyrants will take 
unfair advantage to victimize the weak and unwary.






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