Yamachan'sSumo, Simply Sumo, explained for beginners

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力士  Rikishi Life

Sumo is not a sport its athletes go home from. A wrestler lives where he trains, eats what the stable cooks, wears his rank in public, and answers to a name he was given. This section is about that half of it.


Start here

  1. Inside a Sumo Stable: Where Wrestlers Actually Live No transfer market, no going home after training. The stable is the address.
  2. A Day in a Rikishi's Life Train, eat, sleep — in that order, and the order is the point.
  3. Chanko: What Sumo Wrestlers Actually Eat Not a dish. The word for whatever the stable cooks.
  4. Shikona: How a Sumo Wrestler Gets His Name Given, not chosen — and it can change mid-career.
  5. The Topknot: Chonmage and Oicho Two topknots, not one. Which one he wears tells you where he stands.
  6. Retirement, and the Cutting of the Topknot Most careers end on a list. The ceremony is the exception.
  7. Foreign-Born Rikishi Ten of forty-two in the top division, counted from one banzuke.
  8. How Sumo Wrestlers Are Paid No monthly salary below juryo. One promotion multiplies the money by about thirteen.
The rest of this section is being written

The pages below are planned but not published yet. In the meantime, the banzuke is the closest thing on the site to a description of a sumo career — it is the document a wrestler's working life is recorded on.