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JakobR
30th November 2003, 17:44
I notice that Sumo has been placed under "Gendai Budo". Isn't that strange for a sport that is at least 1000 years old?

Anders Pettersson
1st December 2003, 19:15
Hej Jacob, hoppas att allt är bra. ;)

It isn't that strange, the Sumo Federation in Japan is a member of the Nippon Budo Kyogikai, together with all the other 8 Gendai Budo.
(http://www.nipponbudokan.or.jp/shinkou/html_1/index7.html)


/Anders

BTW, I visited the Fukuoka basho recently, that was my first live experience of Sumo. It was great.

PRehse
1st December 2003, 21:27
Public matches were banned during the Tokugawa era and only restored after the Meiji restoration. It was also never considered a fighting art but more a harvest of at times fortune telling ritual.

It the choice came between Koryu and Gendai I could see Gendai. Koryu works for me too, or neither - a class by itself.

JakobR
8th December 2003, 20:36
I really did not know that matches were banned during the Tokugawa period. Was training banned as well and had it to be reconstruced during the Meiji restoration?

PS. Hej själv, Anders!:)

Mekugi
5th June 2005, 00:46
It was too violent and frequently caused small riots and fighting. Tokugawa Ieyasu (the handsome feller below) was all about the control of the masses, and saw Sumo as bad for the people- so he banned it about 1650. Whatever.
In about 1680 Sumo made a comeback, toning itself down. It was permitted in in Edo, Kyoto and Osaka. In about the mid-1700's the emergence of the Sumo we all have come to know and love today emerges in it's patterns of the year: fall-summer-winter. It's not gendai per se, but it does not matter to me. Everyone knows what sumo is.

-R


I really did not know that matches were banned during the Tokugawa period. Was training banned as well and had it to be reconstruced during the Meiji restoration?

PS. Hej själv, Anders!:)

MarkF
5th June 2005, 15:52
It also had a more spiritual background, and was played sort of like arm-wrestling or the back-wrestling frequently seen in Europe, something to do between wars.;)

Sumo is relatively new in many ways so an argument could be made of it being a modern invention, at least as it is played today. There are world amateur federations of sumo, there is at least one US Women's Sumo Association, and has been rapidly rising in poplarity everywhere, it seems.

Sumo in the Summer Games, anyone?


I do hate it when the commentators refer to it as Sumo Wrestling. Talk about repeating yourself, yourself.


Mark

Todd Lambert
6th June 2005, 11:50
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumo) has a little info in the subject. You can also check out a discussion on the topic at SumoForum (http://www.sumoforum.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5557&hl=gendai).

Mekugi
6th June 2005, 15:18
That section on the Sumo forum is interesting. IMHO they do not know much koryu bujutsu, at least not enough to be drawing conclusions (or kendo for that matter); interesting none-the-less.


Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumo) has a little info in the subject. You can also check out a discussion on the topic at SumoForum (http://www.sumoforum.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5557&hl=gendai).