Sumo Wrestler Hair, Salt Throwing, and Flying Cushions: Japan’s National Sport, Explained

Sumo is Japan’s national sport and one of its oldest rituals: two wrestlers, one earthen ring, and a history said to stretch back some 1,500 years to Shinto ceremonies praying for good harvests. A bout can end in three seconds — but almost everything around those three seconds is loaded with meaning.

That is why sumo rewards a little homework. The topknots are a legally protected relic of the samurai age. The salt adds up to hundreds of kilograms per tournament. Retirement is marked not with a press conference but with scissors and, usually, tears. This guide walks through the details that make sumo one of the best spectacles in Japan — starting with the most-asked-about detail of all: the hair.

Why sumo wrestlers wear a topknot

The sumo topknot — chonmage — is not a costume. It is the samurai hairstyle, worn continuously since the Edo period and surviving nowhere else. When Japan modernized in the Meiji era and an 1871 edict effectively ended the topknot for ordinary men, sumo kept it, and has kept it ever since. It is often said the mage also has a practical side: a cushion of bound hair offers some protection when a wrestler is thrown to the clay. Every professional wrestler, from the newest recruit to the grand champion, wears his hair long for this reason — growing it out is one of the first things a new recruit does. It takes years, which produces one of sumo’s quietly charming sights: young wrestlers in the lower divisions with hair still too short to bind, waiting for their first proper mage the way other athletes wait for a first trophy.

Ōichō vs. chonmage: the hairstyle you have to earn

Look closely and you will see two different topknots in the sumo world. Rank-and-file wrestlers wear the simple chonmage. But wrestlers ranked jūryō and above — the salaried elite known as sekitori — earn the right to wear the ōichō for tournaments and ceremonies: an elaborate style in which the end of the topknot is fanned out into the shape of a ginkgo leaf (“ōichō” means “great ginkgo”). In sumo, in other words, you can read a man’s status from behind. The ōichō is one of the sport’s most photographed details, and losing the right to wear it — by falling in rank — stings accordingly.

Tokoyama: the craftsmen of the topknot

The ōichō cannot be self-made. It is built daily by a tokoyama, a professional sumo hairdresser attached to each stable, using boxwood combs and fragrant bintsuke wax — the sweet, old-fashioned scent that fans say announces a wrestler before you see him. Tokoyama train for years and climb their own ranking ladder, and a top tokoyama’s ginkgo leaf is admired the way a chef’s knife work is. It is a whole profession that exists to maintain a single hairstyle, which tells you much about how sumo treats tradition.

The danpatsu-shiki: a career ends with ten thousand snips

When a wrestler retires, the topknot must go — and sumo has turned that haircut into one of the most moving ceremonies in Japanese sport. At the danpatsu-shiki, or retirement hair-cutting ceremony — held for star wrestlers in the Ryōgoku Kokugikan itself — the retiring wrestler sits in the ring in formal dress while people who shaped his career file up one by one: childhood coaches, sponsors, fellow wrestlers, sometimes hundreds of guests, each taking a tiny snip with a pair of gilded scissors. The whole procession can take well over an hour; the final cut, severing the topknot entirely, belongs to his stablemaster. It is said that even wrestlers famous for never showing emotion in the ring routinely weep at this moment — the topknot they have worn every day for fifteen or twenty years falls away, and with it the identity of a rikishi. If you ever have the chance to attend one, take it.

Salt: 650 kilograms of purification

Before each bout, wrestlers scatter a handful of salt across the ring. This is Shinto purification: the dohyō is treated as sacred ground, and salt cleanses it — the same logic behind the small salt piles you may spot outside Japanese restaurants. The quantities are not symbolic: roughly 650 kg of salt is used over a single 15-day tournament. Only sekitori (jūryō and above) are permitted the salt ritual, and some make theatre of it — crowd-pleasers who hurl great arcing clouds of it draw a roar before they have touched an opponent. Sumo’s salt belongs to the same family of everyday purification and omen-lore we cover in our guide to Japanese superstitions and folk beliefs.

Stomps, power water, and the charge

The pre-bout choreography all means something. The high leg stomps (shiko) are said to drive evil spirits from the ground. The ladle of “power water” (chikara-mizu) each wrestler receives — passed, by custom, from a wrestler who has just won — is a ritual cleansing of the mouth. And the bout itself begins with the tachiai, the explosive initial charge, which starts not on a referee’s signal but by mutual consent: both men must touch their fists to the clay. Two 150-kilogram athletes synchronizing their own start, in silence, is one of sport’s stranger and finer sights.

Women and the dohyō

By long-standing tradition, women do not enter the dohyō, which the sumo world regards as sacred ground under Shinto ideas of ritual purity. The rule is old, and in recent years it has also been the subject of public debate in Japan — including moments when it collided awkwardly with modern life. Visitors should simply know that the custom exists and remains in force at professional tournaments.

Flying cushions: the zabuton storm

When a lowly ranked wrestler topples a yokozuna (grand champion), the crowd’s response is airborne: seat cushions sail toward the ring from every direction. The custom is said to descend from a Meiji-era practice called nagebana, “thrown flowers,” in which fans hurled hats and jackets into the ring for a favorite wrestler, who returned them in exchange for a tip. The throwing is officially prohibited today — announcements ask fans nicely to refrain — and the fans ignore the announcements, which is somehow the most Japanese part of the whole affair.

The banzuke: a pyramid with a steep summit

All professional wrestlers are ranked on the banzuke, a pyramid running from jonokuchi at the bottom up through jonidan, sandanme, and makushita, then into the salaried ranks: jūryō, and finally the top makuuchi division with its summit of sekiwake, ōzeki, and yokozuna. The brutal detail: a monthly salary begins only at jūryō. Of several hundred professionals, only about seventy are sekitori at any time; everyone below lives on allowances, doing the stable’s chores, chasing the line where the ōichō, the salt, and the salary all begin. Few sports draw their class line so visibly.

A day built around practice, chanko, and sleep

The rikishi’s day is an engine for building a rikishi’s body. Morning practice (asa-geiko) starts around dawn, on an empty stomach. The first meal comes near midday: chanko-nabe, the protein-rich communal hotpot that is less a recipe than a category — whatever the stable’s junior wrestlers cook that day. Then, crucially, a long nap: sleeping directly after the enormous meal is part of the weight-building method. Wrestlers live together in their heya (stable) under a strict senior-junior hierarchy, with juniors cooking, cleaning, and attending the sekitori — a system essentially unchanged for centuries. Visitors can taste the culture’s most exportable product easily: Ryōgoku, the Tokyo neighborhood around the stadium, is lined with chanko restaurants, many run by retired wrestlers.

Six tournaments a year

Professional sumo holds six grand tournaments (honbasho) annually, each running 15 days: January, May, and September in Tokyo at the Ryōgoku Kokugikan, March in Osaka, July in Nagoya, and November in Fukuoka. Schedules and results are published on the Japan Sumo Association’s official site. A tournament day runs from morning to early evening, with the top division fighting last — arrive by mid-afternoon and you will catch the ring-entering ceremonies, in which the top-division wrestlers circle the ring in embroidered ceremonial aprons, followed by the best bouts of the day. Come earlier and you will see the lower divisions fight in a half-empty hall: rawer, faster, and a favorite of connoisseurs, since somewhere down there is a future yokozuna nobody has heard of yet.

Tickets and the morning-practice alternative

Broadly, there are two tiers: reserved chair and traditional box (masu) seating, which sells fast and costs correspondingly more, and a limited number of same-day unreserved seats that go for a few thousand yen to early risers. Prices and availability shift by city and day, so check the official site rather than trusting any fixed number. Outside tournament season, many visitors instead watch asa-geiko, morning practice at a stable — an intense, close-quarters experience, generally arranged through stables that accept visitors or via guided tours, and governed by strict quiet-and-stillness etiquette.

A day at the sumo shares its DNA with Edo’s other great surviving entertainment: the all-day, drop-in-anytime program of a rakugo theater. Both are less “a show” than a rolling festival with centuries of habit behind it — and both are best enjoyed with snacks.

FAQ

Why do sumo wrestlers throw salt before a match? The salt is a Shinto purification ritual: the ring is considered sacred ground, and salt cleanses it before combat. Around 650 kg is used per 15-day tournament, and only wrestlers ranked jūryō and above may perform the ritual.

What is the sumo wrestler hairstyle called? The general topknot is the chonmage, inherited from the samurai. Wrestlers ranked jūryō and above wear the more elaborate ōichō for tournaments — the topknot’s end is fanned into a ginkgo-leaf shape by a specialist hairdresser called a tokoyama.

What is a danpatsu-shiki? The retirement hair-cutting ceremony. Guests connected to the retiring wrestler’s career each snip a strand of his topknot with gilded scissors; the stablemaster makes the final cut, severing the mage — and, symbolically, the wrestler’s career.

How much are sumo tickets in Japan? It varies by tournament and seat type: same-day unreserved seats start from a few thousand yen, while reserved chairs and traditional box seats cost more and often sell out early. Check current prices on the Japan Sumo Association’s official site.