Heavy Duty – Inside a sumo training camp

It’s difficult to describe the sound when two sumo wrestlers hit each other, it’s like a freight train travelling at full speed hitting a melting iceberg. It’s a sound that you don’t forget in a hurry and leaves you in no doubt as to just how powerful these guys are. Sumo is a contact sport like no other, so as the saying goes never judge a book…

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To reach the top takes a combination of strength, skill, speed and great determination. From the time you join a sumo stable your life ceases to be your own, and every day you will go to bed with the scars, bruises, and cuts to remind you of that fact. The sport will control almost every aspect of your life including your social life, your diet and even your wardrobe.

I was lucky enough to be able to shoot some junior sumo wrestlers training for the autumn tournament in Tokyo. The training room was in a suburban area of Tokyo and not at all what I expected. It consisted of a large room with tatami mats on a small raised platform where the trainers sat and observed on one side, and then the rest of the room was a sumo ring with some weights in the corner. It looked like a big living room with a sandy floor.

As I entered I was directed to a bench which looked into the training room though an open entrance area. Visitors are not allowed to enter the training room, but the bench is still close enough to the room that one of the wrestlers could accidentally fall on you – it’s both exhilarating and scary at the same time.

Apart from the grunts and slapping sounds as they impact each other, the training room is pretty quiet. The trainers will shout out instructions for particular wrestlers intermittently, but other than that there is almost no dialogue. The wrestlers train instinctively knowing what they should do, seemingly because they follow the same routine every day. Furthermore, the training bouts can be as brutal as the real ones, on the day that I observed one wrestler lost part of a tooth after a bout while another had blood running down his leg.  This really is a case of blood, sweat and even tears as wrestlers are worked until they sometimes literally can’t take it any more.

If you decide you want to visit a sumo stable beware, things are not straightforward. The rules for visitors seem to change day by day. I had to go twice as the first time I was turned away when I got there and was told that it was ‘invitation only’ even though I came along on a day that they had advertised as being open to the public. I asked them if I could come back another day and shoot the wrestlers, and they said that was fine. The next day when I returned I was able to get in and shoot without any problems but a small group that arrived while I was there were told they couldn’t take pictures. Also they are no written rules about protocol while inside, but if you break a rule or go somewhere that you are not supposed to then you are liable to be kicked out. Best advice I can give is just to sit where they put you and stay there quietly, especially if you don’t speak any Japanese as it’s likely no one there will speak English.

But if you get the chance, I would definitely recommend going to see the training as it’s a rare chance to get a close-up look into the world of this unique sport.