Amid the increasingly sweltering temperatures, enthusiasm for sumo is heating up among visitors to Japan who have a tremendous appetite for the traditional sport. 

The craze has been boosted by a sharp rebound of inbound travelers following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions and the overseas popularity of a Netflix fictional drama based on a maverick wrestler.

Fans are not only packing arenas but also visiting training venues outside the dohyo.

NAGOYA TOURNEY PACKS THEM IN

The Nagoya Grand Sumo Tournament concluded on July 23 following a heated competition for victory, which involved rank-and-file wrestlers including 19-year-old Hakuoho, a rookie sensation in the makuuchi division.

The championship went to Hoshoryu, the nephew of former yokozuna great Asashoryu, who thereby secured promotion to the second-highest rank of ozeki.

The tournament drew a full house at the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium, aka Dolphins Arena, for all 15 days of its session.

A big banner saying, “All seats sold, thank you” hung from the ceiling for the first time since 2019 during the annual Nagoya tournament, which is held in July.

The venue was attended by large numbers of fans from abroad, who were on both private and group tours, as border control measures related to the novel coronavirus pandemic had been relaxed.

Sunrise Tours, operated by major travel agency JTB Corp. for foreign visitors to Japan, organized a plan that combined attending the day's bouts with a visit to Nagoya Castle during the closing days of the Nagoya tournament. 

Almost all the slots in the plan were sold, officials said.

“We are in a stage of recovery to the heydays that we had before the pandemic,” a JTB official said. “Most of our customers are from Western countries, including Australia. One thing that stands out this year is that global businesses have booked large numbers of slots on our tours for entertaining visitors to Japan.”

CHANCE TO WATCH SUMO UP CLOSE

The sumo craze is not limited to watching bouts on the dohyo.

The sport remains much sought-after even in even-numbered months, which, under the current setup, offer none of the six Grand Sumo Tournaments held annually.

On a recent weekday morning in June, the practice ring area of the Tatsunami sumo stable in Tokyo’s Taito Ward was seen packed with more than 50 tourists from abroad.

Hoshoryu, the Nagoya victor, belongs to the Tatsunami stable.

Some visitors were seen training their smartphone cameras on practice bouts. Others were taking turns, when the practice session was over, to have their photos taken with rikishi.

The tour was organized by Sumo Experience.com.

The project, which began in 2014, operates such programs as hands-on sumo experience events, which are organized at a restaurant by former sumo wrestlers registered with the enterprise, and arrangements for having former rikishi appear in TV programs and commercials.

Sumo stables temporarily stopped accepting tours during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some, however, have reopened their doors to visitors recently.

Sumo Experience.com has organized sumo stable tours that are led by a former rikishi, who is well-versed in conventions of the sumo world, and a guide who speaks a foreign language, for a fee of 7,700 yen ($54) per head.

The 100 or so daily slots on the tours are often sold out, officials said.

As many as 2,000 or so people watched practice bouts on the project’s tours in the single month of April, an off period between the Spring and Summer Grand Sumo tournaments, partly because the time coincided with the cherry blossom viewing season.

One tour operator is so short of guides that it began conducting online exams on knowledge about the Grand Sumo Tournament to recruit would-be guides.

NETFLIX SERIES CLIMBS THE CHARTS

Sumo caused a stir in the video streaming world when “Sanctuary,” a serial Japanese-language drama that Netflix Inc. distributed across the entire world, gained acclaim.

In the story, Enno, the main character with no prior experience in sumo, aims at rising to the top-rank status of yokozuna while disrupting the staid and humble sport.

The work ranked sixth in Netflix’s Global Top 10 of the most-watched non-English TV programs for the week of May 8-14.

“I watched it, of course,” yokozuna Terunofuji said of “Sanctuary.”

The drama contains a scene wherein the offbeat protagonist shouts, “I'm going to break the sumo world!” Another, just as improbable, shows him raising his fist in rapture on the dohyo after winning a bout.

“I do think that some things in the series are not quite accurate,” Terunofuji said, with a wry smile.

“People outside Japan have this image that the Japanese are about samurai and geisha,” said Terunofuji, who came to Japan from Mongolia in his teens. “Tourists also share that view. I think the work has probably been successful in sending messages on Japan’s charms to the rest of the world.”

(This article was written by Masashi Shimizu and Kensuke Suzuki.)