Wajima (Was Re: Occupations)

[abe@kaleida.com (Masumi Abe)]

Wajima was also well-known for his hair style before being able to wear
mage. He was the very first rikishi ever in Ozumo history who worn curly
hair with "permanent" treatment. He was the first rikishi to adopt running
as his sumo training. Traditionally sumo people believed that running or
jogging will move your center of gravity up too much for sumo.

While he was still in Juryo, he asked Ozeki Takanohana to go eating out. 
This is also very extraordinary act for a Juryo rikishi.

He was a collegeate sumo champion while he was attending Nichidai, or
Nihon University. Nichidai sumo club house and training center was right
next to the original Hanakago-beya where Yokozuna Wakanohana-I used to
belongs to. Hanakago-beya and Futagoyama-beya was called Asagaya group
against the main stream and traditional Ryogoku group. Ozeki Takanohana 
belonged to Futagoyama-beya and Wajima belonged to Hanakago-beya. And
at the time they'd known each other for a while, already.

Wajima's sumo was solely depended on shitatenage (underarm throw) from 
his "golden" left arm. Traditionally, oyakata used to teach their rikishi not
to force shitatenage. Shitatenage is a last resort for counter attack when
your opponent try to throw you with uwatenage, for most rikishi, probably 
except tiny rikishi, such as Mainoumi. But for Wajima, it was literally his
main arm.

As his arm was called "gold", he liked wealth and gold to spend. He was a 
stereotypical "edokko rikishi", though he was not from Edo or Tokyo. He is
the type of person who spends all money you have in just one night. As soon
as he spends money, it appeared from somewhere. That was his 
understanding. It worked fairly well while he was a yokozuna. The biggest
problem for him was that he did not have anyone who could teach him
anything, particularly how to manage his life. He did everything his own
way. He was a "genious" in sumo, and that was all talent he had.

In short, he was a very unique character in sumo community, but also
many people thought he was a spoiled brat.

-Masumiriki

>He was also very controversial while being an active rikishi. He was, I
>believe, the first rikishi from collegiate sumo who reached the high rank.
>He kind of ignored many of sumo traditions and customs. He was criticized
>quite a bit for riding around in his Lincoln Continental and staying in
>hotel room during jungyo. So he was quite disliked already before becoming
>oyakata.
>
>--tom
>
>C. Thomas Wu                            |    ctwu@cs.nps.navy.mil
>Naval Postgraduate School               |    408-656-3391
>Dept of Computer Science, Code CS       |    408-656-2814  FAX
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Masumi Abe                              Tel: 415-335-2011
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