We head to the Honbasho, aka the Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo.
It's our penultimate day in Japan, and we head to the Honbasho aka the Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo on 12th September 2023 - I'll give you the date because it's obviously a real slice of history in terms of helping decide the winners of that tournament, and thus the pictorial and any images within are relevant as such, furthermore, if you've lost track of time throughout these blogs or fancy seeing a Honbasho for yourself, you have a reference point here now too. Anyways, we originally looked at the possibility of watching the wrestlers train in the morning in a more intimate setting, but I figured I'd see if there was a proper tournament on during our trip, and through more luck than judgement, the Honbasho was on in Tokyo. The prices were roughly the same, and I'm not even sure if we'd have got to see the top fighters train given they were otherwise engaged for said tournament, plus the tournament, of course, is a spectacle synonymous with Japan, so it seemed like a no-brainer to me. We booked this through a guide on Klook (I think), which I'd advise doing, because then you can get a background on the event and an understanding about the history and fight classes of the wrestlers, and if not for any other reason than because they often sell out, so that may be a good place to find tickets when they've all been otherwise allocated.
The event starts pretty early, but we've been tasked with meeting with our guide at a local hotel nearby at about 1,30pm or something. Why you ask? Well, simply because the earlier the fights, the less important the fighter. They're usually the youth, the prospects, and those wanting to start at the bottom and who are working their way up the ladder to become a real competitor, and as a result, few are in attendance earlier in the day. By the time we get to the venue, it's still pretty empty because the big boys and the classes that the people are most excited to see don't kick off 'til 4pm. These are the top couple of tiers, the superstars of the tournament, and where the sponsorship and real prize money lies.
I put together a YT short with some basic info on the fights and classes:
The Honbasho lasts several days, and each wrestler will wrestle someone else in their class once a day, and those wins will tally up and determine the winner over the course of the Honbasho. For the big boys, there's some decent money on offer, especially after sponsorships. Some fighters have multiple flag baring sponsorship deals, which I think is a result of both past achievements and personality. Reading online, they make a salary too, but on top of that, we did a little math at the time based on the information passed on to us about the purse and flags, and I seem to remember some heavily sponsored fighters numbering in the 10's of thousands. That is for a single match in a 15-day tournament, but I guess that is also only if they win, and they may not be that heavily sponsored for each day of the competition, but either way, I can only imagine that an appealing and successful fighter will have quite a cushty life at the top.
Logistics of being a spectator
That makes it sound pretty formal and weird, right, but I imagine a few of you may want to know? There are different tiers of seating, with what I imagine is the big big bucks surrounding the ring on the green mats that you see above. I imagine that this is also potentially for friends, family, and the other fighters, but it's probably the sponsors. It does have it's hazards though, as occasionally if you're in the front row, you do risk a wrestler landing on you!
Next up are the 'boxes' in the first tier on ground level.. i'm pretty sure these were an option to us at one point while researching should we have wished to have paid the difference, but I think they were like twice the price and I don't imagine that was part of the guide package that we did, and they of course would have skimmed off the top for their services too, so I imagine it's considerably more than where we were. Having said that, as a small group, maybe you're not paying by the person but for the area, so it may be worth looking in to? A thing to consider about these boxes however, are that you're sitting on a matt and not in chairs, so it could get uncomfortable for us westerners who are not conditioned to such. In our higher tier though, we were thankful for our chairs, but they're not the biggest chairs either, so you could feel a little cramped and claustrophobic, but fortunately being surrounded by tourist groups, some of those who were half arsed and not fully committing to the experience had fucked off as part-timers. From our seats, we had a great view of the inside of this dedicated building (the Ryogoku Kokugikan National Sumo Arena), and when not on a wide angle lens, it's actually a decent view of the ring (dohyō) too to be fair; we never struggled to see the action!
This was a somewhat longer than usual match with some fights lasting less than 10 seconds:
You can move around the arena quite freely as there's merch and food to be had in the concourse, a viewing cabinet of the trophies throughout the years, and a museum we somehow missed, plus there's a massive outdoor area that falls with in the paygate should you want some fresh air, but you of course will have your tickets checked and be denied if you venture down to the lower tier (I imagine by the people on the door). Having said that, they're pretty chilled and will allow you to take pictures from the gate before crossing that line in to said lower tier, of which photography on a professional camera is totally fine! I did ask on the Japan groups prior to going as I didn't want to be caught short with having my camera on me, but ultimately the rule is as long as you're not shooting commercially, it's fair game.
It finishes up roughly 7pm as the sun starts going down and the masses head out on to the streets. It's a reasonably painless process for the amount of people, and I think we head back to drop some stuff off before going in search of a place to eat that Marc was told about earlier in the day. We knew it was near the shop he's bought a present for Linc's Birthday, but that was about it, and we mistakenly take a seat at a sake food place next door to the shop before realising the mistake. In the end, we get confused and give it up for a bad idea, so we just head for a place on a corner. The place was called Coco's, and think it was technically nothing special as far as Japanese eateries go, but it did have robot waiters and come with a tiny hot plate with each meal so you could further cook your meat and melt your cheese.. so that was pretty cool! And if memory serves correctly, you could also refill on soup too. Ordering was also done from the tablet on the tablet and was a reasonably easy process as well.
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