Photographer Paolo Patrizi tells the story about Japan sumo wrestlers’ life and the tough time they are facing.
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| "Gentle Giants"--photography by Paolo Patrizi |
“You have to see the stables more like a monastery than a gym,”
said photographer Paolo Patrizi.
said photographer Paolo Patrizi.
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| "Gentle Giants"--photography by Paolo Patrizi |
Documentary photographer Paolo Patrizi has lived in Japan for the past eight years, and during the time in Japan, he was granted access to three different stables, where those sumo wrestlers live, eat, and practice together, for about one month when he got interested in the sport five years ago. He created the series "Gentle Giants", showing the "Sumos" at work and during their downtime. Through Patrizi’s lens, we can see more about those gentle giants’ daily life.
“I wanted to cover as much as I could of how they live. They spend most of their lives there. They don’t go out much,” Patrizi talked about the series.
“I wanted to cover as much as I could of how they live. They spend most of their lives there. They don’t go out much,” Patrizi talked about the series.
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| "Gentle Giants"--photography by Paolo Patrizi |
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| "Gentle Giants"--photography by Paolo Patrizi |
Sumo wrestlers lead a highly regimented way of life. Though wrestlers
live in a modern world, the life of a sumo is generally guided by
centuries-old practices, including wearing their hair in a chonmage, which is styled after a bath and a shower by a hairdresser who works specifically for the stable. The chonmage hairstyle is similar to the samurai hairstyles of the Edo Period. Furthermore sumos are expected to wear chonmage(click to read about more) and traditional Japanese dress when in public. Consequently, sumo wrestlers can be identified immediately when in public.
Even though there are many rules and details need to be followed. The traditional sport has somehow changed.
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| "Gentle Giants"--photography by Paolo Patrizi |
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| "Gentle Giants"--photography by Paolo Patrizi |
Racked by scandal, people have doubts and worries about wheather this Japan’s most traditional sport can keep up with the times. Apparently, gambling and organized crime have become as entrenched in sumo wrestling culture as topknots and obesity. Police investigated allegations of match fixing in which 13 senior wrestlers have been implicated.
It
follows another scandal over illegal gambling last year which saw live
television coverage of the sport dropped by national broadcaster NHK.
Dozens of sumo wrestlers and their managers have admitted to betting on baseball games, mah jong, cards, and golf through gambling rings organized by the Japanese mafia. The Yakuza, ( Also known as Gokudō, are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan; also see Yakuza ) allegedly take a even more hands-on approach : sponsoring wrestlers and even positioning themselves in front-row seats at matches to communicate with their members in prison.
Dozens of sumo wrestlers and their managers have admitted to betting on baseball games, mah jong, cards, and golf through gambling rings organized by the Japanese mafia. The Yakuza, ( Also known as Gokudō, are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan; also see Yakuza ) allegedly take a even more hands-on approach : sponsoring wrestlers and even positioning themselves in front-row seats at matches to communicate with their members in prison.
The
scandals that periodically rip through the Japanese media are efforts
to rectify outrageous excess within the sumo organization and indeed the
Japanese bureaucracy, but they do nothing to address the structural
corruption that is the normal state of affairs. It’s a genteel, smoothly
organized, even institutionalized, form of corruption, so endemic as to
be called “structural” and thus not usually seen as corruption as we
ordinarily understand it. Sumo has its origins in religious rites and
wrestlers are expected to observe a strict code of behavior.
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| "Gentle Giants"--photography by Paolo Patrizi |
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| "Gentle Giants"--photography by Paolo Patrizi |
"It still is a national sport in the country,” Patrizi said. “The problem is when the wrestlers do the tournaments, the top guys start fighting at 4 in the afternoon. There aren’t that many people who are able to turn on the TV to watch it, aside from the weekend, which is the final. I don’t hear many young people talking about sumo.”
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