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内無双
During the heatwave in July 2022, Japan House London sent an email inviting subscribers to come and watch highlights from the Grand Sumo tournament in its air-conditioned cinema. It was too hot for me to travel to Kensington, but the email also included a link to watch the highlights online. I clicked on it, thinking it might be good for a laugh. Half an hour later, I was still watching. I haven't missed a tournament since.
Discovering sumo is one of the most meaningful things I've done in the past few years. Not only did I gain a new interest and connections to a new community, but ripples spread through my entire life. After I'd been watching sumo for a while, I saw a video of one of my favourite wrestlers, Tobizaru, performing Fukuyama Masaharu's song Kazokuninarouyo on a game show. That was the first time I'd heard of Fukuyama, but it wasn't long before I'd joined his international fan club.
I could only find Tobizaru's performance on dodgy websites, but here's Masha's original.
Discovering Fukuyama's music led me to explore J-pop more generally, and watching his acting in the TV series Galileo, which is based on stories by Higashino Keigo, led to my reading Higashino's novels. That led me to Matsumoto Seichō's detective fiction, which led to … In short, I eventually decided the next logical step was to learn Japanese, which led to my obsession with kanji, which led to the series you're reading now.
*****
“Since you often feel pushed aside in the world,” my therapist said, “I'm struck by your love of sumo, where both opponents push equally.”
“Not always,” I said, “sometimes they fight on the belt.”
Sumo isn't just about who wins, but how it's done. There are 82 possible winning moves, or kimarite, all of which cause the opponent to either step out of the ring or touch the ground with any body part except the soles of the feet. Only a handful of these are used regularly in top-division bouts. For example, there's the yorikiri, or frontal force-out:
The hatakikomi, or slap-down (often preceded by side-stepping from the initial charge, in a legal but frowned-upon move known as a henka):
And the uwatenage, or over-arm throw.
When a rikishi (wrestler) wins with one of the rarer moves, it becomes a topic of conversation, and a wrestler who regularly uses obscure kimarite is often beloved for their technique.
The uchimuso is one such kimarite. The rikishi knocks one of their opponent's legs out from under them by hitting their inner thigh, while using their other arm to twist their body to the ground. It's a very rare move that takes precise timing and co-ordination.
For a Japanese learner, the word “uchimuso” (内無双) illustrates the danger of looking at individual kanji without considering other factors in a word’s development. The three kanji are 内, uchi, “within,” 無, mu, “nothing,” and 双, so, “pair.” It's tempting to see this as a Buddhist koan: the nothingness within both wrestlers? But the real root of the word is 無双, muso, meaning “unparalleled,” because no move can match this one. 無双 is preceded by 内 because the wrestler hits the opponent's inner thigh. If they hit the outer thigh instead, it's a sotomuso (外無双).
That may be a more prosaic explanation, but it's also livelier. Besides, sumo has Shinto origins, not Buddhist.
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The uchimuso wasn't seen much at all until Aonishiki arrived. This up-and-coming rikishi has made it a signature move. It's his third most-used kimarite, after the much commoner yorikiri and oshidashi (frontal push-out).
Aonishiki's real name is Danylo Yavhusishyn. He was born in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, and competed in amateur sumo there as a child. He was 17 years old when Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Leaving the country as a refugee, he eventually settled in Japan and was accepted into a sumo stable. Rikishi are forbidden to comment on politics, so when reporters ask him about the war, he only says, “My family's safe.”
After one of the fastest rises in sumo history, Aonishiki was promoted to the second-highest rank of ozeki in November 2025. If he does well in the 2026 spring tournament, he'll soon reach the highest rank of yokozuna.
*****
My grandmother was half Ukrainian and passed memories of her mother's culture on to me. I was taking Ukrainian classes online when the war began. On the first day I felt I had an open wound under my clothes. At work I did my best to chat with my colleagues. On my break I messaged my Ukrainian teacher, who was sheltering in Kyiv, and asked what I could do. “Pray God saves Ukraine,” she replied. The last prayer I'd said, six years earlier, was “Please don't let my father be dead.” But I tried.
Time passed. Support for Ukraine became a social signifier, one many people rolled their eyes at. The war, like so many unthinkable things, became thinkable. Scar tissue grew over the wound and kept me from twisting too far. All I could do was push through.
*****
After discovering sumo later that year, I had something to look forward to every two months. Through family illnesses and death, bigotry and harassment, my own mental breakdown and the continued deterioration of the world, sumo was always there. I spent a long time unable to cry and still rarely do, but one of those times was when Aonishiki won his first upper-division tournament.
Last October, I got to see Aonishiki's uchimuso for myself at the demonstration tournament at the Royal Albert Hall. I went to all five days and it's one of the best things I've done in a long time: spending hours immersed in something I love with thousands of other people who love it too.
I can get through whatever's coming, I thought. Sometimes the winning move isn't what you expect.
*****
The 2026 haru basho (spring tournament) is on from 8-22 March. You can watch daily highlights and live streams of days 1, 8, 14 and 15 on NHK World Japan's website.