So, I got this idea stuck in my head the other day about sumo wrestlers, the rikishi. I was just watching some old matches, and it hit me – what about their kids? Specifically, their sons. Do they often follow their dads into the ring? It seemed like a simple question, but I figured I’d try looking into it myself, just out of curiosity.
First thing I did, I just popped open my laptop. Didn’t have a fancy plan or anything. Started typing things into a search engine. Stuff like “famous rikishi sons” or the names of wrestlers I knew, like maybe Takanohana the first, or Chiyonofuji. Just trying to see what came up.
Right away, I saw it wasn’t gonna be super easy. A lot of the detailed stuff seemed to be on Japanese websites. My Japanese is, well, pretty much non-existent. I tried using those online translation pages, you know? They kinda work, but the sentences get all jumbled. Made it slow work trying to figure out who was who and what they did.
Digging Through the Bits and Pieces
It felt like hunting for puzzle pieces scattered all over. Some families are really famous, so finding info on them wasn’t too bad. Think the Hanada brothers, whose dad was also a big deal in sumo. That stuff is more documented.
But for wrestlers who weren’t at the very top, or maybe wrestled a long time ago? Much tougher. Information gets thin. Sometimes you’d find a name, but couldn’t be sure if it was the right son, or what happened to them. Did they try sumo? Did they do something completely different? It wasn’t always clear.
I started just making notes. Opened up a simple text file, nothing special. Tried to keep track like this:
- Father Rikishi: [Wrestler’s Name]
- Son(s): [Names I could find]
- What they did: [Brief note – tried sumo, different job, etc.]
It got messy pretty fast. Some wrestlers had multiple sons. Some sons tried sumo very briefly. Some became coaches or had other roles around the sport. Others just vanished from public records, living normal lives, I guess. It was hard to make a clean list.
What I Ended Up With
So, after spending a fair bit of time clicking around, translating pages badly, and scribbling notes, I didn’t exactly produce some grand research paper. It was more like a collection of interesting facts and maybe some unanswered questions.
My main takeaway was just how much effort goes into tracking this kind of family history, especially across different languages and generations. It’s not like there’s one central database you can just look up. It’s buried in news articles, old fan sites, bits of interviews.
Didn’t find a simple “yes” or “no” answer to my original question either. Seems like some sons follow, some don’t. Like any family, I suppose. But the process of digging into it myself, that was the interesting part. Just a small personal project to satisfy my own curiosity, you know?
