The wrestler was about Sano’s age and height, but there the similarity ended. He wore a bright yellow kimono printed on the back with one of the rebus designs currently popular: a cherry branch, sword, and oar, which, when named aloud, sounded like “I Love a Fight.” It hung open to reveal a huge flabby belly girdled with a fringed black loincloth. Putting his hands on his hips, Raiden bent at the waist, exposing massive naked buttocks. He canted sideways, raising one bent-kneed leg high, then lowering it so that his dirty bare foot struck the earth with a mighty stomp. Dust rose in puffs. He stomped again: both to show his strength and to drive away evil spirits. His fierce scowl made a demon mask of his round, pudgy face.
The audience cheered. “Raiden!” The name, a colorful pseudonym like many assumed by professional wrestlers, meant
“Thunder and Lightning.” And Raiden’s excited spectators certainly acted as though they expected from him all the power and drama of a violent storm. “Raiden! Raiden!” A few men set up the chant, tossing coins at their champion’s feet.
“No contest,” the man beside Sano remarked.
Sano looked at Raiden’s opponent and privately agreed. The man disrobing on the other side of the circle was as big and fat as Raiden, but clearly no professional wrestler. The good clothes and the absence of swords marked him as a merchant. When he took off his kimono, Sano caught a glimpse of its opulent lining: the wealthy commoner’s secret protest against the government’s laws forbidding him to wear silk. Shivering in the cold, the man clumsily imitated Raiden’s stomps. His moonlike face wore an expression of confused glee, as if he didn’t quite understand how he’d got himself into this but was tickled at his own daring. The men who held his clothes, presumably his friends, cheered him on.
Raiden took a pouch out of his kimono. He poured a white substance from it into his hand. Most of it he scattered into the makeshift ring; the rest he tongued. Salt-to purify himself and the ground according to ancient tradition. Then he shrugged off his kimono and threw it to the boy with the wooden drum.
The two competitors faced off, crouched at opposite sides of the circle. Fists to the ground, they stared into each other’s eyes. The audience fell silent. Sano’s heart began to pound as the tension mounted. Instinctively he took a step backward, away from the ring.
This was not the ancient Shinto fertility ritual of fourteen hundred years ago, in which wrestlers from neighboring villages competed for the blessings of the gods at rice-planting time. Neither was it the legendary match of some five hundred years later that had determined which of two imperial princes would succeed to the emperor’s throne. And it bore no resemblance to today’s great tournaments, where professionals retained by the daimyo performed in formal style before huge audiences on the grounds of Edo ’s important temples. This was street-corner sumo at its worst: wild, dirty, and unpredictable. Anything could happen. Sano wondered if he should try to stop the match. Although the government issued periodic edicts against street-corner sumo, it wasn’t currently illegal. He saw two doshin he recognized as his subordinates on the other side of the ring. The match even had tacit official sanction.
With loud roars, Raiden and his opponent charged simultaneously. Fat met fat with a tremendous smack. The impact sent both men staggering apart. The spectators jumped back and recovered their voices.
“Kill him! Kill him!” The shouts thundered in Sano’s ears.
Raiden rushed the merchant with a speed amazing for such a large man. Using tsuppari-slapping technique-he delivered a series of rapid, open-handed blows to the merchant’s chest, throat, and face. The merchant grunted, more out of confusion than from pain, Sano thought. He tried to slap back, but Raiden advanced, forcing him to the edge of the ring. Just when it seemed the match would end with Raiden’s victory, the wrestler stepped back. He grinned and beckoned his panting opponent to attack him. Sano understood that Raiden didn’t want an easy win. He was pulling his punches and giving the merchant another chance in order to bring in more spectators and more money.
Gamely the merchant threw himself at Raiden. The two grappled, Raiden standing his ground almost without effort as the merchant shoved and gasped. Raiden broke the merchant’s hold. He fell back two paces, whether or not on purpose, Sano couldn’t tell. Maybe he’d lost his balance; maybe he was still baiting the merchant.
“That’s the way!” shouted the merchant’s friends.
Buoyed by their support, the merchant launched a fresh charge. Sano winced, anticipating another crash. But Raiden sidestepped at the last minute. Seizing the sides of the merchant’s loincloth in both hands, he used the man’s own momentum to cast him out of the ring: the outer-arm throw, one of sumo’s classic forty-eight “hands.”
The merchant went hurtling into the crowd. His friends caught him as he fell. Raiden’s supporters cheered; the merchant’s cried out in disappointment. Then the cheers and cries turned to uneasy mutters.
Sano’s heart lurched when he saw why. The wrestler’s teasing grin had become a murderous grimace. His face purpled with a strange fury. Without warning, he lunged at his fallen opponent. He pummeled the helpless merchant with his fists, all the while bellowing like a mad bear.
“Stop!” the merchant screamed. Blood spurted from his nose. “You win! I surrender!”
The merchant’s friends tried to fend off Raiden’s assault, but the wrestler turned on them. Suddenly the crowd became a turbulent mass of flying fists, kicking legs, and thrashing bodies. Men yelled insults, uttered cries of pain.
“Stop!” Sano shouted. The crowd’s noise drowned his voice. He tried to draw his sword, but bodies pressed against him, making movement impossible. If only he’d stopped the match when he’d had the chance!
This was the real danger of street-corner sumo. Not that a wrestler would get hurt in the unrefereed matches-although many did-but that violence would break out among the audience. A crowd could quickly become a mindless killing tool, a sword flying free of any controlling hand. Now the spectators ran for safety. Sano saw the drummer go down and get trampled under the pounding feet.
Fortunately the two doshin chose that moment to remember their duty. “Break it up!” they shouted. “Everybody go home. Fun’s over!”
Poking and prodding with their jitte, they dispersed the crowd. One of them called his assistants to pick up the wounded men. Sano, standing in the shelter of a teahouse doorway to avoid being driven off with the rest of the crowd, watched the other doshin stroll over to Raiden, who stood in the center of the ring.
The wrestler’s mysterious rage seemed to have passed as quickly as it had come. Now his face wore a dazed frown. Blinking in apparent befuddlement at his departing audience, he called halfheartedly, “Any more challengers? Who among you is brave enough to face the mighty Raiden?”
No one was. The doshin extended his hand to Raiden, palm up. Raiden sighed, then bent to pick up the coins from the ring. He counted half the money into the doshin’s hand. The doshin smirked and walked away, jingling the coins. He didn’t notice Sano, but then he would hardly expect to see his superior in a place like this.
So Raiden paid the doshin to tolerate his matches and keep order at them. Sano shook his head, knowing he must reprimand his subordinates during the next report session. The outcome of the fight could have been much worse: Men had died during such matches and the riots they provoked. Cautiously he walked over to Raiden, who now stood alone in the ring, scratching his crotch with one hand as he examined the coins he held in the other. The wrestler looked harmless enough now, but would his rage resurface?