Word: yokozuna
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...weighs 300 lb., wears his hair curled in a knot on top of his head, dresses in a 15-lb. fringed apron and an enormous belt made of twisted straw and paper streamers, looks as if he were proud of having just swallowed a medicine ball. He is the yokozuna (champion) of Japanese sumo (wrestling). Fortnight ago in Tokyo, some 10,000 yapping devotees of Japan's most ancient & honorable sport saw him attain this distinction in the final of the semi-annual national tournament in the Kokugi-kan amphitheatre. Spry little Musashiyama, defending yokozuna, ten years younger than...
...After several years of displacing boulders the candidate is considered tough enough to begin learning the 48 tricks & dodges of Japanese wrestling, or Sumo.* In a 12-ft. ring a Japanese wrestler grunts through a brief career of trying to squash his opponent into submission. If he becomes a yokozuna (champion) he may tie a piece of straw rope around his waist and consort with the highest personages, but even for the yokozuna pay is small, consisting mostly of patrons' contributions and roast pigs and bottles of sake sent by admirers. Soon the wrestler has his hair cut, retires...