Indonesia
When Sumo Wrestler Makes Baby Cry
Have you ever thought of how strong the lung of a crying baby? Or how to get rid of evil spirits that disturb them? Well, this competition might give you the answer, Superkids. Japanese sumo wrestler don’t just fight opponents on the arena. They also have extra task to bring babies to cry as loud as possible in the annual Nakizumo Festival or Sumo Crying Babies Festival.
The festival takes place in the end of April. It’s part of the Golden Week sequence, the series of nine days off between the end of April to beginning of May. The competition takes place everywhere in Japan, inviting oversized sumo wrestler and innocent little babies of 6-8 months. Japanese use to call this ‘naku ko sodatsu’ roughly translated into ‘crying babies grow fast’.
The Nakizumo Festival is dated to 400 years back. The purpose is to scare off evil spirit and let the babies grow healthy and stronger. The occasion is held in a place that resembles real sumo arena. The babies are often dressed up in mini kimonos, have devil horns put on their head or wear bibs with kanji writing on them. But many appear to be in casual outfit and even half naked like the sumo wrestler that holds them.
The competition is lead by a traditional sumo wrestler referee called gyoji. Gyoji wears silk costume, with wooden fan to give signal that the race is on. Two wrestler will step on the stage with one baby each. Those babies are positioned face to face. The wrestler then will try to make its baby to screams and cries out loud. This is done by pulling faces or swings the baby up and down and shouts, “Naki! Naki! Naki!” translated “Cry! Cry! Cry!”. Their companions in casual outfit give assistance by wearing ugly mask in front of the baby.
The winner is of course the first baby to cry. If both start sobbing in the same time, the louder baby prevails. But not all baby can be brought to tears in this festival. Some babies laugh instead, or even fall asleep. Of this happens, the gyoji steps up wearing a scary mask to get the job done. The battle ends with everyone shout, “Banzai raku!” meaning “Long live!”.
“The babies’ cries are intended to reach God and parents hope that their little ones will grow healthy and strong. So if a baby doesn’t cry at this event, sumo wrestlers try to make him or her cry on purpose, moving the baby up and down, while their parents watch with pounding hearts,” said the Priest Yoshimi Morita, as quoted by DailyMail.
HAFIDA INDRAWATI
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES
