I was going to write about Sumo for the topic of “Sport in Japan”, but this is much more fun to write about…

“What did he just say?! Nappy-wearing cry-babies?!” Yeah, that’s right, sumo is full of nappy-wearing cry-babies!

No, no, I don’t mean proper sumo, those guys would crush me in an instant. I mean “Baby-cry Sumo” (子泣き相撲 Konaki Sumo).

子泣き相撲 Baby-cry Sumo

Baby-cry Sumo is a 400 year-old annual event in Japan where basically everyone tries to make babies cry. There seems to be many different variations of this but the main theme is that two sumo wrestlers each hold a baby, face each other and wait for the babies to cry. The priests assist by shouting and waving at the babies in an attempt to scare the living shit out of them. The baby to cry first or to cry the loudest will win. It gets my vote for the next Olympic sport. It’s a fun event for all the family, as shown in the video below:

A Japanese proverb says “crying babies grow fast”, so the louder the child cries the more the gods are thought to have blessed them with good health. I’m not sure if the gods would think it cheating or not but some wrestlers like to shake the babies in an effort to make them cry. As if a scary old priest shouting in their faces isn’t enough:

Some may see it as a bit harsh to terrorize these poor little kids, but if you look back and see that 400 years ago a loud cry was considered a sign of a healthy baby with a healthy pair of lungs, it’s not such a bad thing.

I’ll leave you with a longer video, but skip to 4:10. Did he just say “F*@k you!”? I guess some priests can’t take the embarrassment if the baby laughs or falls asleep.

For more photos check out the 2008 festival page, Japan Probe and CNN.

This is my entry into the October Japan Blog Matsuri!