[9] As sumo became embedded in Japanese myths and legends, stories of powerful wrestlers began to appear in the Nihon Shoki (one of the first historical record of Japan), and with them the first accounts of matches held during the Yamato kingship period.

[14][15] During the Sengoku period, Oda Nobunaga made sumo a popular sport, aided by the emergence of large cities (like Edo, Osaka, Sendai and Nagoya), which soon began to compete with Kyoto's cultural monopoly, as it had been Japan's only metropolis.

[17][18] These masterless samurai, called rōnins, could not engage in any activity under their social category under threat of punishment, and with the period of peace, it had become almost impossible to be recruited by local lords who no longer needed to build up a sizeable military retinue.

On one side, certain powerful clans (such as the Kishū Tokugawa, Maeda, Ikeda, Matsudaira, Sakai and Hosokawa) formed suites of wrestlers organized into royal households called geisha-gumi (芸者組, lit.

[19] On the other, a number of rōnin had no choice but to put their martial art skills to good use in street sumo tournaments, called tsuji-zumō (辻相撲, tsuji-sumo, lit.

[20] Similarly, a number of street entertainment wrestling groups formed and began touring, sometimes with the support of shrines that occasionally recruited them as part of religious festivities and to help priests raising money for the construction of buildings.

[22] Public order became so disturbed by 1648 that Edo authorities issued an edict banning street sumo and matches organized to raise funds during festivities.

[23] The edicts did not stop there, however, and also had an impact on wrestlers for some thirty years, with the publication of an order banning the use of shikona, or ring name, a tradition observed since the Muromachi period.

[23] At the same time, instructions sent out to local lords advised drastic savings on suite costs, and the maintenance and recruitment of vassalized wrestlers ceased altogether.

[23] Over the next two decades or so, the wrestlers, now without any income, decided to petition the authorities to lift the bans, forming coalitions of interests to protect themselves from any violent repression of their movement.

[24] In 1684, a rōnin named Ikazuchi Gondaiyū (雷 権太夫), leader of one of these coalitions, obtained permission to hold a tournament after proposing a new etiquette associated with matches organization.

[27] As representatives of their domains, wrestlers attended tournament matches at the foot of the ring, and made a point of contesting decisions unfavorable to their lords, as part of rivalries between clans.

[32] During the Tenpō era, the feudal system was shaken by famine and rebellions, and the wrestlers who took part in the tournaments gradually withdrew to perform their duties at the households of the daimyo who maintained them.

[37] At the same time, political circles were organized to preserve some of Japan's indigenous traditions, saving the privilege of wrestlers to wear samurai chonmage (topknot) in 1871.

[39] After that initial movement, a number of reforms were introduced to adapt the competitions to Japan's new political and financial context, notably by distributing better salaries to wrestlers and basing the latter on results.

In the summer of 1965, Taihō, Kashiwado and Sadanoyama were part of a group of eight wrestlers who went to the Soviet Union at the invitation of the Russian government to perform goodwill matches.

[59] With the abolition of the height and weight prerequisite system, the Sumo Association now judges new recruits on the basis of an athletics test, reintroduced in April 2024 for the first time in 12 years.

[54][61] All new wrestlers are then required to attend the Sumo School, located at the Ryōgoku Kokugikan, where they spend six months learning the basic movements as well as calligraphy, history, jinku (folk songs) and sports medicine.

[61][62][63] If a new recruit experiences a record rise and already reaches the status of sekitori before completing his course at the Sumo School, it is accepted that he may not take part in lessons, although all the wrestlers who have found themselves in this situation have decided not to make use of this right (such as Endō and Ichinojō).

Rikishi are expected to grow their hair long, in order to be worn in a style of chonmage, a topknot similar to the samurai hairstyles of the Edo period.

It was common at the time for wrestlers to allow themselves to grow a designer stubble during tournaments out of superstition, fearing that shaving during a winning streak would attract bad luck and put an end to it.

[124] For the top-ranked wrestlers, however, the ceremony takes the form of charity tournaments, with non-stake matches, presentations of traditional sumo-related arts and performances by prestigious guests.

[129] Wrestlers who have attained the rank of makushita and who have not been sufficiently active in jūryō may carry out subordinate functions within the association as wakamonogashira (若者頭) or sewanin (世話人).

[138] Sumo wrestlers who have fought in mixed martial arts include Akebono Tarō, Alan Karaev, Baruto Kaito, Henry Armstrong Miller, Kōji Kitao, Ōsunaarashi Kintarō, Tadao Yasuda, Takanofuji Sanzō, Teila Tuli and Wakashoyo Shunichi.

Professional sumo has always had more wrestlers during periods of great rivalry between champions, with the record number of new apprentices taking the entrance exam set in 1958, at the height of the HakuHō era (柏鵬時代), with 250 successful candidates.

[153][154] The most conservative commentators criticize them for their lack of typical Japanese hinkaku (品格); loosely translated as 'dignity' but meaning a balance of self-confidence, self-knowledge and self-control.

[155][156] Takamiyama was followed by a fellow Hawaii-born Konishiki, of ethnic Samoan descent, the first foreigner to reach the rank of ōzeki in 1987;[157][158][159] and the Native Hawaiian Akebono, who became the first foreign-born yokozuna in 1993.

The move has been met with criticism, not least because Japanese society, with its centuries-old and xenophobic culture, is accustomed to treating foreign wrestlers as gaijin (外人, lit.

[150] John Gunning also proposed another interpretation of the decision, claiming that this rule was not based on racist sentiment but to ensure that foreign rikishi assimilate into sumo culture.

[173] During sumo's first golden age in the late Edo period, the Japanese collective imagination first developed an image of larger-than-life wrestlers with excessive appetites and superhuman strength.