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From the Olympics Toword Tomorrow
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Japanese rituals in ceremony delight many, puzzle some
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''The sumo wrestlers were terrific,'' said Charles Shaffer, a visitor from the United States. ''They emphasized Japanese culture, and made the ceremony special.''
Professional sumo wrestlers, naked from the waist up in winter temperature that barely reached 3.1 degrees C, performed two separate ring-entering ceremonies in an act of purification for the start of the 16-day festival of ice and snow.
The first ceremony featured the members of sumo's elite makuuchi division, clad only in their silk sashes and decorative brocade aprons, forming a ring on the center stage and performing a hand-clapping and foot-stomping ritual to prepare for a fair competition.
The second rite featured yokozuna Akebono, the Hawaiian-born grand champion, who performed the ''dohyo-iri'' ring purification ceremony in a symbolic gesture to summon the attention of the gods and to drive away evil spirits.
The wrestlers, some of them who had tiny body warmers stuck under their feet, appeared determined not to let the mid-winter cold prevent them from enjoying the event.
''My mother will be watching me (in the United States), and that's the best thing,'' Akebono, 28, said before the opening ceremony.
''Ten minutes of cold and a lifetime of memories,'' he said as he braced his 235-kilogram frame against the chill..
Their efforts seem to have paid off.
The wrestlers gave the ceremony ''a traditional, oriental flavor,'' said Kim Yong Tae, a visitor from South Korea. ''I liked the Asian style of the ceremony.''
The raising of ''onbashira'' pillars, a tradition of Nagano's Suwa region, was also one of the highlights of the ceremony, which mingled state-of-the-art technology with ancient Japanese tradition.
Eight large wooden pillars, made of trees cut from the mountain forests of Nagano, were erected in pairs to form gates to the north, south, east, and west. The gates were meant to create a sacred space for the Nagano Olympics.
''It was very interesting,'' said Darcy Hilgendorf, an American who has been living in Tokyo for two years. ''I didn't know about the tradition and I think it added a nice local flavor to the whole thing,'' she said.
But some say they were perplexed by the rituals.
Sergey Sudakov, a member of the International Olympic Committee's medical commission, said that although he found the ceremony interesting, he did not understand all of it.
''Was the wooden thing a symbol for something? To purify the stadium? That's it?'' he said. (Kyodo News)
No part of the article, photographs, or illustrations presented here may be printed or used without permission.
Copyright 1998 The Shinano Mainichi Shimbun