A Ukrainian who fled his homeland following Russia's full-scale invasion has become the first from his country to win an elite-level sumo championship in Japan.
Danilo Yavhushyshyn, who now competes as Aonishiki Arata, defeated Mongolian-born Hoshoryu on Sunday in the deciding match in the Kyushu tournament in western Japan.
Yavhushyshyn, 21, had left Ukraine more than three and a half years ago, just after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of his country.
He finished the two-week-long tournament with a record of 12 wins and three losses, before eventually defeating Hoshoryu, one of Japan's two grand champions (yokozuna). When asked if he felt satisfied with the result, Yavhushyshyn told reporters: "No, I think this is just the beginning."
Last month, he told reporters that he wished people from Ukraine would be “able to see my sumo and have some kind of encouragement from that.”
“Sumo is quite popular in Ukraine, however, it’s quite rare for someone to be doing only sumo," he said. "They’ll often be doing wrestling and sumo, or judo and sumo.”
Yavhushyshyn said he came to Japan in 2022 after striking up a friendship with a Japanese wrestler at a tournament in 2019. He hasn't been back to Ukraine since arriving in Japan and said, of course, he'd like to visit.
“It is the place where I was born, where I was raised," he said. "It is my homeland and there are many people I know there. So if there were a chance I would like to be able to go and visit Ukraine.”
Non-Japanese sumo wrestlers have excelled in different periods in Japan. They have included Mongolians, Hawaiians and now Ukrainians. A second Ukrainian, Shishi Masaru, is also a highly-ranked wrestler in Japan.
Ukraine has a very strong tradition in Olympic wrestling. Its last gold-medal winner was Zhan Beleniuk in the Greco-Roman category at the Tokyo Games, which were delayed until 2021 by the pandemic.
Sumo wrestling is a traditional Japanese full-contact wrestling sport in which two competitors (rikishi) try to force each other out of a circular ring or make any part of the opponent’s body, besides the soles of the feet, touch the ground.
Unlike many Japanese sports, sumo remains deeply wedded to Japan's roots. The same set of rules and rites that applied when matches were performed in the Japanese Imperial courts, as far back as the eighth century, continue to influence today’s proceedings.
How exactly sumo started, historians are unsure. But links have been made to harvest rituals associated with the Shinto religion. That legacy can be seen in the use of salt purification and the stylised, shrine-like roof which covers the ring. There are now about 600 wrestlers in the professional setup, well down from a peak of around 1,000 in the early 1990s.
In October, Japan's top sumo wrestlers rolled into London's Royal Albert Hall for a five-day tournament to showcase their ancient sport.
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