Re: [sumo] Daizen Danpatsushiki and Takanohana-Beya

[Doreen Simmons <jz8d-smmn@asahi-net.or.jp>]

At 2:18 AM +0200 04.2.2, Moti wrote:
> Daizen had his hair cut by 344 people yesterday at his retirement 
> ceremony. Takanohana beya has been established on February 1st-Futagoyama 
> beya is no more for now. His first official duty as heya owner was to snip 
> Daizen's mage at the latter's Danpatushiki. Daizen was on the dohyo for 22 
> years and retired at the age of 38. Highest rank- Komusubi. 35 bashos in 
> Makuuchi, 2 kinboshis. Afterwards, he said: "I looked in the mirror and 
> said to myself-' Hey! Feels like no mage! ' I'm back to the hairstyle I 
> had when I entered Sumo, but I'd sure like to go back in years as well.." 
> He will be an Oyakata at Nishonoseki, and will go by the name of Fujigane.

As with Akinoshima's dampatsu-shiki on Saturday, I was there -- but this 
time by a different route, through a friend of a friend. Although Daizen 
collected an impressive number of men to take a snip at his mage, obviously 
he had more trouble selling seats than Akinoshima (most unfortunate to have 
two successive days of intai-sumo from the same ichimon). So instead of 
passively relying on walk-in customers to sit scattered about the balcony, 
they actively organised invitation programmes for Japanese language 
schools, for instance. Empty seats bring in no money at all, so they 
offered bargain-price seats plus a box of sandwiches and some tea  to the 
mostly young foreigners studying Japanese. In this way they filled up a 
fair number of the seats at the front and the sides near the front. But 
most of them didn't understand what they were looking at and the ones 
sitting nearest me started wandering around just as the haircut was getting 
interesting, with Daizen's family, followed by representatives of the 
Kyokai and the ichimon, and finally the stablemaster cutting the whole mage 
clear.

Why didn't anybody prepare some information for them? The answer seems to 
be that the Japanese teachers and organizers of the tour didn't know enough 
about sumo to prepare the students in advance. S a one-off opportunity was 
offered, but I wouldn't like to guess how many of the young foreigners will 
ever come back, after their "taste of sumo".

~Doreen Simmons
     <jz8d-smmn@asahi-net.or.jp>~
[EndPost by Doreen Simmons <jz8d-smmn@asahi-net.or.jp>]