The Japan Sumo Association's first overseas exhibitions in 20 years will take place next October in London, the organizing body revealed Friday.
In advance of the tour, JSA President Hakkaku will attend Wednesday's press conference in London.
The event, featuring bouts between wrestlers from the top-flight makuuchi division, is aimed at promoting friendship and goodwill.
It will be the JSA's first event in London since 1991 when the sport was enjoying a boom in popularity. With Japan now experiencing increased tourism from abroad, grand sumo tournaments have become popular stops for overseas visitors.
The association, which will celebrate its centennial next year, has previously staged 13 overseas tours, starting in 1965 with two events in the Soviet Union. Eight of the 13 tours have taken place since 1990, with the last in Las Vegas in 2005.
Since 2006, organizers other than the JSA have promoted tours to Taiwan, Los Angeles, Hawaii and Mongolia. However, between declining popularity and the coronavirus pandemic, these have not taken place since a 2013 event in Jakarta.
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Asiaman7
Exhibitions are fun, but you can’t beat the intensity of top wrestlers at real tournaments inside Japan.
Unfortunately, many tickets for Japan’s six annual tournaments are being snatched by tour operators, who are then repackaging/reselling those tickets at higher prices to tourists, thus making tickets less available to local residents.
It’s also sad to see sumo tournaments being used as “brief cultural stops.” At a tournament in Tokyo earlier this year, I witnessed 50 non-Japanese enter together with a guide at 16:00 and then depart together at 17:00, which is an hour before the end of the day’s bouts. That hour is when all the top matches occur! What a complete waste! There are so many true fans of sumo who would love to have those unused seats.
Moreover, because seats are being hoarded by tour operators selling at higher prices to overseas tourists, many seats are actually going unused. At every sold-out tournament, batches of empty seats can be seen everywhere, particularly in the second tier of Tokyo’s Kokugikan. The Japan Sumo Association drops the “full house” banner every day, but the Association also asserts the venue needs to be “only about 85% full” for the banner to be dropped.