Hokkaido Highway Blues

allowed to keep their traditional samurai topknots when Japan went through its drastic modernization in the late nineteenth century. The rikishi’s hair, oiled, pulled back, and combed into elegant fan-shaped rooster-combs, give them a Samson quality. (When a rikishi retires, his top knot is ceremonially cut away with a pair of golden scissors, his strength drained.)
    The rikishi are massive, strong, obese, arrogant men. They are not especially bright. They drink heavy, play hard, anci giggle like little kids. They are the last of the samurai. A scent of perfumed oil and sweat surrounds them like an aura of... well, perfumed oil and sweat. Women throw themselves at rikishi, and the rikishi get to eat as much as they want. I would give anything to be reborn as a rikishi.
    Hiro and I discussed the previous tournament, the upsets, the triumphs. We picked our favorite fighters. Hiro naturally favored the ones from northern Japan, I favored the ones from the south. For some reason, a disproportionate number of rikishi come from either Hokkaido in the far north or Kagoshima in the far south. Even their styles of fighting have been described as “hot” and “cold,” with the smaller southern rikishi known for their blistering arm-thrusting attacks, and the heavier northern rikishi tending more toward slow, walruslike grapplings.
    Sumo is the national sport of Japan. It is part religion, part ritual. The origins of the sport lie in the contests of strength once held to entertain the gods during festivals. The high-level, professional sumo of modern Japan still takes place under the suspended roof of a Shinto shrine, and the ring is blessed by a priest prior to each tournament. The tournaments are replete with pomp and ceremony The referees resemble priests, the rikishi toss salt into the ring in a purification ritual before each fight, and the Grand Champions, the yokozuna, wear white ropes—styled on those of Shinto shrines>— around their midriffs during their elaborate entrance ceremonies.
    Fights rarely last thirty seconds. It’s a hell of show. Explosive and yet, restrained. There are no weight divisions in sumo, which means that little ninety-kilogram halfpints can go up against two-hundred-fifty-kilogram giants, and the giants don’t always win. Sumo requires a low center of gravity— hence the force-fed diets and round, heavy bellies—but smaller, faster, smarter rikishi can get inside, grab the belt, and upset much larger men, who fall like toppled redwoods.
    And so it was.
    Instead of plumbing the depths of our souls, Hiro and I talked sports like a couple of regular guys. I think there is a fear, somewhere in the mind of the traveler, an unease with emotions laid raw and bare. I prefer width to depth, variety of experience to intensity of experience, quantity to quality. And there is something about Japan—the surface reflections and refracted lights—that allows you to skim across without having to sink below. Japan does not swallow souls whole, as do some countries. Countries like India. China. America.
    Japan is a nation perfect for hitchhikers, and one of the great appeals of hitchhiking is that it is a transitory experience. You cut through lives in progress, the rides flip by like snapshots, and the people become a procession of vignettes. I was not searching for catharsis or murky depths, I was searching instead—for what? I suppose I was hoping, somehow, to find in this pixilation of people and places something larger, an understanding, if not of Japan, then at least my place in it. It was not a quest—that is too grand a word for it. It was more of a need, an itch, quixotic at best, presumptuous at worst.
    So I left Hiro Koba to the privacy of his life, to his own singular joys and small defeats. He liked sumo, he missed Nagoya. That was enough.
     

16
     
    THE CITY OF Saiki was built largely upon reclaimed land. This gives it a low, flat feel. The area around the port was arranged in a grid: square blocks, wide avenues, and boxlike buildings. With several hours until the evening ferry, I wandered aimlessly through this forlorn town. It was the kind of place you expect tumbleweeds to roll through. Signs creaked on rusted hinges, and the stale smell of fish and diesel fumes had seeped into every house and plank. The paint was peeling, like eczema. Strangely enough. Saiki’s straight-square gridwork of streets actually made it harder to get around. It was a confusing place. Every corner