Nakizumo – Sumo Baby Crying Competition

One of the most heartwarming traditions in Japan that I know of is the official Nakizumo (泣き相撲) – the crying baby competition. It takes place both in temples and in shrines, and I visited the biggest ceremony in Tokyo at Asakusa’s Sensoji temple. The ceremony was overseen by buddhist monks and a real life sumo referee. 120 babies were divided into two teams, the East and the West and three sumo wrestlers took turns taking the babies into the ring. In Tokyo the competition is very simple: each match is 60 seconds long and the baby that cries that hardest is declared the winner (in other areas of Japan the rules vary quite a lot). The sumo wrestlers are supposed to be big and scary for the babies and the judge and referees do their best by crying “nake nake nake” (泣け 泣け 泣け cry cry cry!) to the kids as the match begins. More often than not, neither of the kids starts crying in the 60 seconds of them match though, and the referees would have to don masks and funny faces to scare the babies. This usually didn’t work either and many of the 60 matches ended in draws.

The day was fantastic with lots of sun meaning that many babies had promptly fallen asleep by the time the matches started. The first little boy taken out into the ring slept all through it. The audience are encouraged to take part in cheering the kids but for most of the time we were too busy laughing to the hilarious kids and the funny referees and their running commentary on the matches. Many kids were too busy laughing or much more interested in the opponent babies to cry but the ones who eventually really started bawling were greeted with applause and cheers.

The ceremony in this temple is meant celebrate both the children and their parents as well as wishing them strength and good health.

Funnily enough the scariest looking sumo wrestler was the most popular with the kids, very few of the babies handed to him started crying and he was eventually disqualified for being to popular (by a joking referee). There are always a few people who are amazed at a ceremony like this, and for them I recommend reading a few thousand entries on this rather funny blog: “Reasons My Son Is Crying”. Warning, don’t click this link at work – you are not likely to get any more work done today if you do!