Hokkaido Highway Blues

Uwajima bullfights, a competition held only seven times a year. Today was one of those seven days. My timing had never been better. I booked an extra night at the inn and, following a hastily drawn map provided by the innkeeper’s wife, I went in search of Bull Sumo.
    When I arrived, the banners of individual bulls were aflutter outside the arena and crowds had already formed. We filled the seats in a crush of bodies, and the air was thick with the dust and pungent smells of rodeos half remembered from my youth. The same raw energy, the same blue-jean crowds, the same earthen pit.
    I had heard of bullfights when I was in Okinawa, but I didn’t know they were held on the main islands of Japan as well. The sport itself is part pageantry, part parody. The bulls are ranked just as in real sumo, from Grand Champion (yokozuna) down in numbered levels. The bulls being larger than life, a new rank has been added specifically for them, one higher than even yokozuna and rendered, inexplicably, in English: Super Champion. These bulls were definitely on steroids. They were pumped up, swaggering, slicked-down, and barrel-chested.
    “They feed them beer, you know,” said the man beside me. ‘And eggs. Raw eggs.”
    “No kidding,” I said. They certainly were impressive animals.
    “And snakes.”
    “Snakes?”
    “Habu. From Okinawa. Very poisonous.”
    “They feed them snakes?”
    He nodded gravely. “Makes them fight.”
    The man behind me had been eavesdropping and could take no more. “ Oi!” he said to the first man. “Not snakes, you idiot. Snake-shōchu. It’s alcohol, they soak habu snakes in the bottle, you know, like worms in Mexican tequila. They don’t feed them actual snakes. Where did you hear such a thing?”
    The first man refused to acknowledge this and continued to address only me. “They eat snakes,” he repeated.
    The second man tapped me on the shoulder. “No, they don’t.”
    “Snakes make them strong,” said the first man.
    Another tap on my shoulder. “It’s not true. Don’t listen to him.”
    And on it went, a running argument-by-proxy with me in the middle. I remained neutral.
    “Welcome,” said a loudspeaker, “to the second annual All-Japan Championship, pitting local Uwajima bulls against the best from Okinawa, Tokyo, and Kagoshima.”
    “Who owns these bulls?” I asked the man beside me, but the man behind me answered instead, as though my question had boomeranged.
    “Farmers, truck drivers, anybody.” He was speaking down the back of my neck. “It’s a hobby sport. It began with the Dutch more than a hundred years ago. A Japanese fisherman saved a Dutch ship from sinking during a storm and they presented him with two bulls to show their thanks. The fisherman didn’t know what to do with them, so he started staging fights.”
    “He didn’t think to eat them?”
    “Oh, no. Japan was completely vegetarian back then. Buddhist, you know. Over the years more bulls were brought in, and it really began to boom. Lots of gambling, drinking. People would bet their tax money in rice and lose everything. Some lost even their houses, so around Taishō ten—”
    “I’m not good with the Imperial dating system. When is that?”
    He thought a moment. ‘Around 1925- Anyway, the government banned it and everyone was very sad. The town just couldn’t get any energy, you understand? Very sad. The city alderman who supported the ban lost his seat in the next election, and soon we had bull sumo again and everyone was happy. But after the war, it was banned again. General MacArthur. He said it wasn’t good for public morality.”
    I twisted around halfway in my seat. “How do you know all this?”
    “I’m just reading from the program. Look,” he passed it up to me and pointed out a section in it. I pretended I could read it.
    “See,” he said, louder than was necessary. “Right there. They feed them snake-liquor, not snakes.”
    There was a pause. The man beside me leaned over and said, in an equally loud voice. “My father once saw a bull eat a habu, fangs and all. They eat snakes, these bulls. Makes them strong.”
    A clicking of wood and the long, wailing voice of a ring announcer marked the start of the tournament. Everything mimicked real sumo: the list of fighting “techniques,” the ceremonial tossing of salt to purify the ring, the embroidered aprons thrown over the bulls like saddles, the white rope belts of the champions. The bulls had stage names as