Sumo is Japan's national wrestling sport. The professional version — the one with tournaments, rankings and salaries — is called ōzumō, "grand sumo".
The rules of a bout are wonderfully simple. Two wrestlers face off inside a raised ring of clay. You lose if any part of your body other than the soles of your feet touches the ground, or if you are forced out of the ring. That's it. Most bouts are over in a few seconds — but the build-up, the ritual salt-throwing and the staring-down can take minutes.
The wrestlers are called rikishi. They don't just turn up to compete: they live and train together full-time in a heya, a "stable", where junior wrestlers cook, clean and serve the seniors. It is a complete live-in way of life, run by a retired wrestler called the oyakata (stablemaster).
The ring is the dohyō — a circle of packed clay topped with sand, its edge marked by partly buried straw bales, built fresh for every tournament. The referee inside it is the gyōji.
Why "hakkeyoi"? When two wrestlers lock up and the action stalls, the gyōji shouts "Hakkeyoi!" — roughly, "put your spirit into it — give it everything!" (While they are actively moving he shouts "Nokotta!" — "still in!"). It is the most recognisable sound in sumo, and the name of this site.
Picture professional sumo as one building with six floors. Every one of the ~600–700 wrestlers is on a single ranked list — and that list is sliced into six divisions.
From the top floor down:
The single most important line in that building runs between Makushita and Jūryō. The top two divisions — Makuuchi and Jūryō, about 70 wrestlers — are the sekitori: salaried, fully professional, with a personal attendant and the right to wear a silk ceremonial apron. They wrestle 15 bouts a tournament, one a day.
Everyone in the four lower divisions is still, in effect, a trainee — paid only a small allowance, doing chores for the seniors, and wrestling just 7 bouts per tournament. Crossing into Jūryō changes a wrestler's life.
In one lineA teenager can debut at the bottom in Jonokuchi and, winning tournament by tournament, climb all the way to the top floor — and a few do exactly that.
Within the top division, five named ranks form a strict ladder. The official sheet that lists who stands where is the banzuke — and it is torn up and rebuilt after every tournament.
Ōzeki, sekiwake and komusubi together (with yokozuna) are the san'yaku — the titleholders. Everyone else in the top division is a maegashira, simply numbered: Maegashira 1 is the strongest, then 2, 3, down to about 17. Every rank also has an "East" and a "West" side, with East counted very slightly senior.
The magic of the banzuke is that it is alive. After every tournament a panel of judges rebuilds it: win more than you lose and you climb; lose more than you win and you drop. How far you move depends on your record and on who you had to fight. The ladder reshuffles six times a year.
There have been just 75 yokozuna in the entire recorded history of the sport. Promotion is deliberately rare: the benchmark is winning two tournaments in a row (or an equivalent dominant record) while ranked ōzeki, plus a judgment on character and dignity — hinkaku — by the Yokozuna Deliberation Council. Because the rank can never be taken away, the sport is, in effect, choosing someone for life.
A grand tournament — a basho — lasts 15 days, and the maths is delightfully simple.
Each top-division wrestler fights once a day, every day, for 15 days — a different opponent each time, no rematches. The matchmakers arrange it so the strongest wrestlers meet near the end.
Because 15 is odd, you can never finish exactly even. Get 8 wins and you have a kachi-koshi, a winning record — you'll move up. Get 8 losses and you have a make-koshi, a losing record — you'll move down. Every wrestler, at every rank, is chasing eight.
Whoever has the most wins after Day 15 takes the championship — the yūshō — and lifts the Emperor's Cup (and around ¥10 million). If two or more wrestlers tie, they don't share it: they fight a sudden-death playoff bout, the kettei-sen, then and there.
Three special prizes, the san'shō, go to standout non-champions in the top division: Outstanding Performance, Fighting Spirit, and Technique. And when a rank-and-file maegashira beats a yokozuna, he earns a kinboshi — a "gold star" that comes with a permanent pay rise.
An ōzeki who posts a losing record is not demoted on the spot. Instead he becomes kadoban — on probation — and must post a winning record in the very next tournament, or drop to sekiwake. (A demoted ex-ōzeki can win the rank straight back with 10 wins in his first tournament down.)
Every bout ends with one of 82 officially recognised techniques — the kimarite — and the referee announces which one just won the match. Most bouts end with a straightforward force-out or push-out; a few exotic techniques appear only once in many years.
The terms you'll meet most often, with a rough pronunciation guide.
Six tournaments are held each year, on a fixed calendar — January, May and September in Tokyo, March in Osaka, July in Nagoya, November in Fukuoka — each running 15 days, Sunday to Sunday.