When I was in Osaka, Japan, I went to see the 2019 Sumo Grand Tournament in Osaka. I think it was on the 8th day of the 15-day tournament. In this post, I’ll share a video of Yokozuna Kakuryū Rikisaburō Ring-entering Ceremony, the Kanreki dohyō-iri.
Back then I didn’t know a lot about Sumo, because it was the first time I was in a tournament. It’s also was the first time I spend time trying to understand this sport. Yet I knew how fascinating it is.
The video that I am about to share is from March 15, 2019. It was captured on Friday at 3:50 PM. It was the start of the Top division bouts. In this
If I had an optical zoom, I would be able to capture a better video. I know have a DSLR, so if I attend a Sumo tournament again, I’ll definitely have better photos and video to share with you. Although, overall, it turned out quite good considering the distance I was from the arena.
Yokozuna Rank
Yokozuna is the highest rank in Sumo. One of the criteria of being promoted to Yokozuna is winning two consecutive tournaments. After you learn about Sumo and spend some time studying about the fighters themselves, you see how hard it is to get to that rank. Only a few Sumo fighters were able to achieve that rank.
Kakuryū Rikisaburō is a professional sumo wrestler from Sükhbaatar Province, Mongolia. I was speaking with a Japanese guy in the EDION arena, and he told me that nowadays Sumo in Japan is mostly lead by Mongolian wrestlers. This also includes Hakuhō Shō, which is no doubt one of the best Sumo wrestlers of all time. He won that tournament by the way. I have a video of his ring-ceremony and I’ll upload it in a future post.
I learned to acknowledge those moments more after I came back to Japan and learned more about Sumo. When viewing Sumo videos again, I learned to further appreciate those moments. I think I would have relished it, even more, had I had more knowledge about it and more correlated with the sumo wrestlers.
I hope you enjoy this video. More to come. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel (See footer). Thanks for watching.