Meet the subject
廻し
A mawashi is the long strip worn around a sumo wrestler’s waist and between the legs. It supplies clothing and a surface for belt-gripping techniques. The broad, decorated keshō-mawashi seen in ring-entering ceremonies serves a different purpose from the belt worn in a bout.
Shimekomi is the competition belt of wrestlers ranked jūryō and above.
Training belts are also worn in tournaments by wrestlers below jūryō.
Keshō-mawashi is ceremonial dress for the ring entrance.
The strip is folded, passed between the legs, wound around the waist and secured behind. In its professional-sumo explanation, the Japan Sumo Association gives an approximate ten-metre length and a basic four wraps. Educational and amateur settings can specify different dimensions and arrangements.
These excerpts show the pouch, between-leg route, waist turns and rear fastening. The Japan Sumo Association guide gives the complete sequence.
Rank helps identify the material used in professional tournaments. Sekitori wear silk shimekomi, while wrestlers below jūryō compete in the cotton keiko-mawashi they also use for practice. Educational and amateur guides explain folding and fastening within their own teaching settings.
A competition belt can carry narrow hanging cords called sagari at the front. They differ from the broad decorated front of a keshō-mawashi. That visible distinction helps separate bout dress from ceremonial dress before identifying a particular wrestler or design. The Japan Sumo Association says the belt and cords remained integral until the late Tokugawa period, then were separated because fingers could catch during bouts.
In yotsu-zumō, wrestlers work at close quarters with belt grips. Uwate reaches outside the opponent’s arm; shitate reaches inside. Stance, arm position and balance combine with the grip. The Nippon Budokan handbook’s amateur rules permit belt gripping but prohibit taking hold of the front pouch covering the groin.
Sekitori means wrestlers in the jūryō and makuuchi divisions. They wear shimekomi for tournament bouts; wrestlers below jūryō use training mawashi. School, children’s and amateur settings have their own clothing provisions, including simplified teaching belts worn over sportswear.
Dohyō-iri is the ring-entering ceremony. Sekitori appear in keshō-mawashi with a broad embroidered apron and thick fringe. Designs may relate to a wrestler, donor or supporting organization. For the bout itself, wrestlers use their wrapped competition or training belts.
The Sumo Museum’s 2018 exhibition listed a keshō-mawashi used by Todagawa Washinosuke, who died in 1773. Together with documents of early and middle Edo-period professional sumo, the object places ceremonial dress within a specific eighteenth-century setting.
The Sumo Museum describes wrestlers before the middle Edo period competing in embroidered shimekomi that hung roughly to the knees. It dates the separation into a bout shimekomi and keshō-mawashi to around the Meiwa–An’ei years, 1764–1781. The broad decorated apron now serves ring-entering ceremonies, while the close-wrapped belt serves bouts.
Professional sumo retains conventions relating rank and occasion to dress. Amateur competition and school instruction work with their own provisions, including simplified teaching belts over sportswear. These arrangements provide different settings in which beginners can practise.
Keshō-mawashi has a broad decorated apron; bout dress has a wrapped belt and may carry narrow sagari cords.
Wrestlers in the jūryō and makuuchi divisions.
The ring-entering ceremony, distinct from a bout between two wrestlers.
An uwate belt grip reaches outside the opponent’s arm; shitate reaches inside.
Keshō-mawashi used by Todagawa Washinosuke; Sumo Museum’s 2018 exhibition