Miscellaneous Projects: Sumo morning workout

A weak sun barely warms the Tokyo dawn, but one tiny corner of the city is already sweaty and humid, filled with the dull thumping sound of giant naked men slamming into each other.? Buttocks red and stained brown from the mud floor, the men are a grunting, force of nature -- all the more intense for carrying out their combat in almost total verbal silence.

Little prepares the uninitiated observer for a morning sumo workout, which is filled with painful insults to the flesh.Heads attached to bodies weighing up to 160 kg clash at bone-crunching speed, apprentices are tossed around like bags of rice; wrestlers practice by ramming their shoulders against a solid wooden post as thick as a small t

As we watch this session in the Sado Gatake stable, 30 minutes west of Tokyo, a skinny apprentice in outsized mawashi (loincloth) is repeatedly slapped and flung to the floor by larger men.? When he starts to weep, snot and tears dripping from his face, they slap him harder. “You have to be able to endure and ignore pain,” explains Kotooshuu, one of the sport’s top stars, after the workout. “If you can’t, you shouldn’t be here.”

text from story © David McNeill..