Even after nearly a quarter of a century in Japan, here’s a subject I knew nothing about until today. Kyodo is reporting that moves are afoot to revive—not start—women’s sumo. I was hoping that the women might wrestle in mawashi, the same stylized thongs the men wear, but no such luck.

According to the article, women’s sumo was as popular as men’s sumo in Japan, Taiwan, and Hawaii until the 1960s, when it disappeared. The article is well worth reading, but Kyodo could have made it even better by spending more time translating and editing it. First they state it was as popular as men’s sumo, then they say there was a period when it was more popular than men’s sumo (though they don’t say when), and they conclude by claiming that “many people remain tight-lipped about women’s sumo”. Really? I’ve yet to see any Japanese I know remain tight-lipped about something that was popular until the 1960s.

I shouldn’t come down too hard on them, though, because the web abounds with confusing information on this subject. The Kyodo article says that women’s sumo originated in the 1880s; yet this source says it was banned in the 19th century as being harmful to public morals. There is no indication of when the ban was removed or why the sport fell out of favor. Novelist Akira Hayasaka, who plans to write a stage play about the sport, said he saw a women’s sumo tournament under a tent on a vacant lot in Ehime Prefecture around 1941. This snippet from the Mainichi Shimbun from more than a year ago states that women’s sumo started with World War II and the shortage of men.

Yet this article from a Russian website claims that onna-zumo started in Osaka in the 1700s and was performed by prostitutes. They also say that women competed with blind men. (Feel free to take a few minutes to consider all the possibilities before continuing to read. I did.) They also say it was banned in 1926, which contradicts the other articles. They suggest that people in Japan don’t talk about it because of the associations with prostitution, which makes sense on a superficial level, but that still doesn’t sound like any Japanese people I know. Come to think of it, the Russian claims for the origin of women’s sumo also might explain the Kyodo article’s statment that it was more popular than men’s sumo at one time. The site features photos of Russian women grunting and shoving, which I am not about to show on this site. (Those ladies are even more massive than my great aunt, a first-generation Russian American who worked in a can factory.) The two Thai girls look much more graceful.

Apparently, there are some differences between the male and female versions. Sumo originated about 2,000 years ago as a way to entertain the deities during festivals, and many Shinto rituals are still used for the matches today. (Here is a good summary of the religious aspects.) This does not seem to be the case with women’s sumo, however.

Entertainment without the tradition was probably the objective of the female variety. The Japanese women had a kind of tournament called gonin nuki (beating five wrestlers in succession), which the men don’t have, and also performed hajikara. This latter entertainment seems to place women’s sumo in a category akin to women’s professional wrestling, as the wrestler picked up rice straw with her teeth and pounded steamed rice on her belly into the dough used for rice cakes. (This is probably a variation on mochitsuki, a New Year’s custom in which a special variety of especially glutinous rice is pounded by friends, family and neighbors to make the rice cakes, or mochi, which are eaten during the holiday. I’ve done it once, and it’s hard work!)

There’s more than a touch of irony to all this. Women were banned from sitting at ringside to watch sumo matches until the 20th century, and they are still forbidden to enter the ring. The ban has to do with Shinto and its insistence on purity. Women in primitive societies were considered impure because they menstruate, and sumo still hasn’t gotten over it. Even the men have to purify the ring before they step into it; that’s why they throw salt into it first.

Japan wants to make sumo an Olympic sport, but the IOC thought that idea was a non-starter because of the ban on women. So, a women’s federation was formed in Japan in 1996, and several tournaments have been held. Here’s the Daily Mainichi profiling a female Japanese rikishi back in 2001; they describe her as being “just an ordinary girl”. I wouldn’t assume that Japanese women have an advantage in international competition because of their familiarity with the sport, however. It would not be an easy task to push some of those Russian women out of the ring.

Besides, everyone’s getting into the act. Here’s an article about women’s sumo in the U.S., written by California Sumo Association President Andrew Freund in 2001. Taking advantage of journalistic privilege, he quotes himself in the third person: “We are very proud of our women’s team.” And here’s this 2003 article from Britain’s Daily Telegraph, which focuses on British sumo but also reports that women from 17 countries are now actively involved.

Still, it may take a little longer before the women’s sport becomes established. As the president of the British Sumo Association noted, “You can’t go up to a woman and say, ‘Hey, I think you’d be good at sumo’.”