Musubi
Taishō and the Dai Nippon Sumo Kyokai
On April 29, 1925 a dedicated group of part-time athletes thrilled the emperor-to-be with an all-out display of sumo prowess. It all began with plans for the 1925 (Taishō 14) birthday of Michinomiya Hirohito, the Crown Prince of Japan. This particular group of sumo rikishi1 was invited to hold a tournament at the Akasaka Palace in the Crown Princeʻs honor.
They were the Tokyo Kakuriki Kyōkai. This was Tokyo’s organization of rikishi and rikishi training stables. It handed out ranks to the various rikishi, set the rules, provided referees, and found locations to display the popular sport.2 Sumo is as old as the hills. Or nearly. It really has been around for a very long time. There are even depictions of rabbits and frogs engaging in sumo-like bouts in the famous Chōjūgiga scroll from the Heian period (794-1185 C.E.). During the many years of Japanese history between 1185 C.E. and 1920, it was most often performed during festivals and religious gatherings in the courtyards of Shintō shrines. Ask any fan. They will tell you that Sumo is a sport, but it also has religious aspects. The rikishi were usually bushi (武士): samurai. The second character is exactly the same character for “shi” as in “rikishi” - meaning gentleman, or samurai. No doubt some non-samurai who were good at fighting, or local champions, or just big, got in on the act, too. My point is, they all had day jobs. There were no “professional” or full-time rikishi. They fought to prove themselves and to entertain the public. You know the drill - a summer festival on shrine grounds featuring Bon dancing, koi fishing, water balloon toss, and sumo with local guys. Even the idea of the dohyo - the 5.4 meter ring in which sumo matches happen today - came eventually, not right away.
In the Tokugawa Period (1601-1868), Sumo tournament locations branched out as the sport became, like so many things in the Tokugawa Period, a popular entertainment. They were still mostly held on the grounds of temples and shrines, but they could be held in more pedestrial locations, too. Most major cities, including Osaka, Kyōto, Nagoya, and Edo (later Tokyo) had their own Kakuriki Kyōkai - local amateur sumo groups who trained and put on tournaments. These Kakuriki Kyōkai also often promoted a culture of sumo in which famous rikishi trained newer rikishi by giving them a common place to train, with a training program supervised by the stable master - the Oyakata - a standard hierarchical category among businesses, samurai groups, and even gangsters in the Tokugawa period. If you went to work in a sweets shop, the owner of the shop was the oyakata, and you did things his way, and eventually earned the right to call yourself a part of that particular “clan” of sweets makers, for example. It was essentially a master-trainee relationship, and very common.
By 1925, most of those groups had disappeared due to declining numbers. But Tokyo and Osaka held on. So when the planners for the Crown Princeʻs party wanted a tournament in Tokyo, they went to the Kakuriki Kyōkai, who were more than thrilled to be asked. They did request one thing, however. They wanted to use some of the money the Imperial Internal Affairs Ministry granted them to put on the tournament to create a prize for the winner. The ministry okayed that, too, and, beside themselves with gratitude, they had a prize cup made and named it after the Crown Prince, who would become the emperor the very next year. This was thus the first Emperorʻs Cup - the central prize awarded at every basho, or tournament, to this day.
In 1925 the cup went to the top-ranked Yokozuna (grand champion) of the Tokyo Kakuriki Kyōkai: Tsune no Hana. He won by a rare zenshō yūshō - a championship earned by winning every bout. In this case he likely won eight times in a row against eight different powerful opponents. His performance impressed the Royal Presence. More importantly for the history of the sport, following this exhibition, the Tokyo Kakuriki Kyōkai was granted an Imperial charter as the first Sumo organization in Japan allowed to employ full-time rikishi. They became professionals.
Learning of the Imperial charter and looking for a new business model, the Osaka Kakuriki Kyōkai, which was the only other viable sumo organization in Japan, suggested a merger. The two groups held negotiations: the so-called East-West Talks. On December 28, 1925 the Dai Nippon Sumo Kyōkai was officially founded through the merger (musubi) of the Tokyo and Osaka organizations. They declared Tokyo to be the home base of Japanese Sumo. That meant that the Kokugikan (the National Sport Hall), a government-funded sumo venue built from 1906-1909 in Ryōgoku, just to the north of the railroad tracks from where it is today, right next to the venerated home of Tokyo sumo at Ekoin Temple, became the geographical and administrative center of the new professional organization.
Modern Sumo, with the national organization, professional rikishi living in stables run by former rikishi known as oyakata, steeped in Tokugawa-style hierarchy, with tournaments centered at the Kokugikan in Ryōgoku, was born in Taishō. In this way, even if no one was really a “samurai” any longer by the Taishō Period, these rikishi revived - more accurately, perhaps, “reinvented” an important set of samurai traditions as well as a popular entertainment. It became, forgive the pun, serious business. Still, credit where credit is due. Organization took some time, and the first tournament under the new organization did not get under way until February of the second year of the Shōwa era: 1927.
Iʻm going to call the athletes who do Sumo “rikishi” (力士) - literally “powerful gentlemen” or “strong warriors,” rather than “wrestlers” for two reasons - one, wrestlers is a Western term and it doesn’t quite capture what they do, and two, I am a committed sumo fan, and using the word “wrestlers” rather than “rikishi” feels like I am swallowing dust. Call me dilettante. Call me worse. I am aware of the pettiness of this choice. So much for historical objectivity.
If I was really a dilettante, Iʻd insist on calling these people “gyoji” (referee) and “shinpan,” (judges) but even I have limits to peppering the text with arcane terminology.
Bibliography
Beasley, W. G. The Rise of Modern Japan. 2. ed. St. Martin’s Pr, 1995.
Ikeda, Masao. Sumō Hyakunen No Rekishi : Shashin Zusetsu (100 Years of Sumo History in Pictures). Nihon Tosho Sentā, 2014.
Seidensticker, Edward. Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to Earthquake. 1st ed. A Borzoi Book. Knopf, 1983.
Wakamori, Tarō. Sumō No Rekishi to Minzoku 相撲の歴史と民俗 (Sumo History and The People). Kōbundō, 1982.
山村英司 and 山村英司, 1968- author. 経済学で読み解く, 大相撲 300年史: 本所, そして両国の磁場. Dai 1-Han. 日本評論社, 2025.
Great post! I hope this is the first in a series! Looking at the photo of the interior of the original Kokugikan, I now understand why the spectator seating is so “flat” or horizontal: the pillars. They took this design aspect to the modern Kokugikan. It really makes me wish I could sit seiza!
I learned so many things I didn’t know before.
Your piece really helped me understand how sumo came to embody the dignity and formality we now associate with it as a traditional Japanese sport. The historical context makes that transformation feel much clearer and more meaningful.