History– category –

The danpatsu-shiki is the ceremony that marks a sumo wrestler's retirement, in which his topknot is ceremonially cut off in front of family, friends, sponsors and fellow rikishi. Guests come up one at a time to take a single snip with a ...

Sumo is Japan's national sport, with roots as a Shinto ritual performed over a thousand years ago. It began not as competition but as a way of praying to the gods for a good harvest, and it survives in Japan's earliest myth-histories and...