Rikishi

Travelling around the eastern part of Tokyo, it is not uncommon to find rikishi, or sumo wrestlers, going about their daily business. This is especially true around Ryogoku, home of the Tokyo Sumo Hall known as “Kokugikan” and the training stables (yes, they are actually called stables) for sumo wrestlers. Rikishi are organized in highly structured rank, this young man probably being of the lowest rank as he is out and about in only a yukata (thin summer kimono). The life of low ranking rikishi is difficult; when not practicing, they are expected to do chores and menial tasks for the higher ranking wrestlers.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.