Just what is a sumo? Is it a sport, a religion, an aesthetic feast, living traditional culture, or a battle of titans? The simple answer is Yes!

For the first time ever, David Benjamin's The Joy of Sumo strips away the veneer of culture and looks at Japan's national sport through the eyes of a true aficionado.

Learn what makes a sumo exciting. Read what makes individual wrestlers tick. Understand why there are no weight divisions. Find out how to remember names. Memorize tactics. But most of all grasp why such a plethora of descriptions of the sport can all be true.

Sumo, like any sport, has its heroes, horrors, and hilarity, and The Joy of Sumo has something for everyone. Guaranteed to provide invaluable information for everyone form the novice fan to the expert, The Joy of Sumo also is the first book to do it with the same humor normally associated more with football, basketball, or baseball. In fact, after he's read this book, the sportslover's world will never be quite the same-just broader and more fun!

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The pit
'Death Valley'
Rhythm and recognition
2 Big Al and the silver spoons
Nomenclature: Proper and improper
3 The 'Gouping urge:' Blubberbutts and thoroughbreds
Left-right-up-down and all that
Genus and species
4 Backstage: Choking up in the Church
Napoleon and Konishiki
The locker room
Aprons and ads
The meditations of the beast
5 The Sumitori rag: Pose-striking, time-killing, and the eight forms of screwing around
The importance of the overture
'Kokoro' and KTUSH
The KTUSH pecking order
Eight ways to screw around
6 Tachiai: Hookers, bulldozers, boxers, stranglers, matadors, and lowdown yankee liars
Jumpers and receivers
Bohr's constant vs. the human factor
'Fast is good, heavy is better'
The five styles of tachiai
To live and die at tachiai
7 The fistfight at the Malemute saloon, and other Japanese cultural treasures
The expert
Hands, feet, and angles
The guy in the pajamas
The finish
Extra terms
8 The ripsnorter in Nagoya
Chiyonofuji's ghosts
Asahiguji's jinx
The match
9 Afterward: 'Keep up appearances whatever you do...'
The membrane of sportsmanship
The rite of withdrawal
The interview
10 The Basho boogie
Banzuke: Confucian confusion
The real ranks: Upper echelon
The real ranks: Down below
The weight of concentration
Good Basho, bad Basho
11 Tank this one for the gipper
LIttle spoon, Tamaryu, and the politics of Mono-li
A sense of honor
'Yaocho doesn't exist'
The last-day blues
How to take a dive
The rite of passage
12 The statistical imperative
The data deficit
Rating the rikishi
13 Their bodies, our selves
The way of all flesh
The final touch
Epilogue
Glossary