Shiko, rattle and roll: sumo casts its spell on London

With professional sumo being held outside of Japan for just the second time ever, Alex Pattle reports on a transportive night of wrestling, salt and ritual at the Royal Albert Hall

- Alex Pattle

As photos circulate on social media of sumo wrestlers riding Lime bikes and recreating the cover of The Beatles's Abbey Road, a question springs to mind: is there a more enigmatic sport than sumo? A more widely known yet less consumed sport internationally?

Indeed, sumo (the “wrestling” is effectively redundant in the translation) has thundered throughout worldwide popular culture for decades, and yet its actual competitions have been almost exclusively contained to its native Japan. In a historic turn, this week marks just the second time ever that a professional sumo contest is being hosted abroad. How’s that for a stat?

Sumo has made a miraculously rare excursion overseas, as London’s Royal Albert Hall receives the honour of hosting the Grand Sumo Tournament. The sport’s only previous international event also took place in the ornate London venue, in 1991. Yet upon setting foot in the Albert Hall, it becomes immediately, starkly clear: the protagonists of this event are not the guests here; rather, as an onlooker, one feels a guest to an entire culture.

That cannot be said of the Japanese fans present, of course, and there are many of them. But such is the emphasis on the rituals around sumo that there is something transportive about this event – and even the Japanese in the stands surely feel that transportive essence, too.

It fills the stunning, cylindrical room from the very first second of the afternoon’s blessing of the ring, which is admittedly closed off to fans but to which