2020-1-28
While the New Year Grand Sumo Tournament was being held at the Kokugikan, I visited Ryogoku for the first time on an errand.
For some time now, whenever I have traveled to Tokyo… obvious though it may be… I have found myself thinking that Tokyo is Edo.
The other day, when I visited Ueno for the first time in a very long while to see the Van Gogh exhibition after an errand, that feeling became definitive.
The reason I think something so utterly obvious is that, among people who do not live in Kyoto, I am the person who visits Kyoto more than anyone else in the world.
I mean not in the sense of attending school or working for a company there, but in the sense of visiting not only Kyoto’s streets but also the Kyoto Imperial Palace, its shrines and temples, and other places.
Kyoto was Japan’s capital continuously from the Heian period until the beginning of the Edo period.
Ryogoku is the town where Katsushika Hokusai was born.
It is also the town where Katsu Kaishu was born.
It positively exudes the atmosphere of Edo.
I immediately took a liking to it.
For lunch, I had chanko hot pot near the JR station.
It was not only truly delicious but also very reasonably priced.
Now, to the main point.
What was extraordinarily lucky was that the Grand Ukiyo-e Exhibition was being held at the Edo-Tokyo Museum near the station.
It was a major exhibition encompassing works by five artists: Utamaro, Sharaku, Hokusai, Hiroshige, and Kuniyoshi.
As readers know, I see almost every exhibition that strikes me as worthwhile, but this one was breathtaking.
Indeed, it was the first exhibition at which, partway through, I let out a grateful cry of “My body cannot take any more—please, have mercy,” in the best possible sense.
And yet, with admission costing 1,400 yen, it was the best-value exhibition of all time.
From the moment I saw the first Utamaro work, I was compelled to murmur, “Utamaro is extraordinary.”
And after him came four more geniuses who made me proud to be Japanese.
To see everything with one’s mind fully sharpened would require three hours.
It was an extraordinarily sumptuous exhibition.
It was a weekday afternoon.
There was an enormous crowd, but most of the visitors were women.
Japanese women are the happiest in the world, possess the finest aesthetic sensibilities in the world, and have the highest intellectual level in the world.
Each is flourishing in her own way as a woman and living a supremely happy life.
Flourishing as a woman does not mean only working as a company employee, and it certainly does not mean becoming an executive at a publicly listed company.
This world consists of men and women, and within it, they flourish as women and live happily.
It is Japanese women who are the most affluent and happiest in the world and who enjoy freedom to the fullest.
Thoroughly satisfied, I decided, with excitement, to visit the Kokugikan for the first time.
Tokyo is currently under construction everywhere, and there are many places, particularly around stations, where one cannot reach one’s destination easily.
The Kokugikan should have been just a short distance from the museum, but it seemed necessary to take a detour.
Just then, there was a woman who looked like a housewife living nearby, so I asked her to confirm the way, and she said, “That is where I am going, so let us go together.”
To my surprise, she turned out to be from Hong Kong.
She said she had come to Japan to watch sumo.
In my halting English, I told her how extraordinary the efforts of the people of Hong Kong were.
She kindly took me to the entrance as we talked and I told her how impressed I was.
There, I was surprised yet again.
I had loved watching sumo since I was little.
As a child, I often wrestled sumo for fun.
I had never imagined that sumo wrestlers were such huge stars.
It would be no exaggeration to call them Japan’s greatest stars.
I am not moved by young people flocking around popular singers and the like… though I do react with an astonished “Well!”
One could say that it was only when I went to the Kokugikan that I first truly recognized sumo as Japan’s national sport.
The route along which the sekitori enter the Kokugikan is filled with women waiting to see them.
They crowd the pavement and even form lines on the Kokugikan’s steps.
The sekitori make their way in past them in twos and threes.
“It is Tochiozan.”
“I have seen Tochiozan, so that is enough for me…”
It was a truly lovely scene.
In front of Ryogoku Station, there is a sumo museum, and inside it is a full-sized sumo ring.
I saw one for the first time.
I was astonished.
By how small it was.
Wrestlers with such enormous bodies compete in such a small ring.
Is there any other sport so astonishing?
This article continues.