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© 2004, SumoFilms Inc. |
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PRAISE FOR “SUMO EAST AND WEST”
"When (Pearlstein) moves her camera in close on the combatants—including the side-of-beef celebrity sumo wrestler Manny Yarbrough—you can see the muscle and sinew at play on the bodies of these men, who resemble giant toddlers. There is an actual culture clash here because the movie centers on the invasion of the sport by Americans, particularly Hawaiians, like the seemingly gentle Wayne Vierra, who is determined to break through the pro-Japanese grip of the sport."
"Filmmakers Ferne Pearlstein and Robert Edwards display
considerable sensitivity to the sport's near-holy status in Nippon culture,
and are ideally positioned as Yank cineastes to connect with those outsiders
who are transforming the sport by their very presence....Pearlstein's camera,
granted unprecedented access in Japan, records the brutal rituals endured by
rookies designed to test their physical and mental mettle for the intense competitions...brings
the sport and personalities vividly alive.
"One of the sharpest photographed and edited feature docs I've seen lately, which is truly a pleasure (and rare)."
“Bizarre, fascinating....A witty film that even the most reverent sumo fan can appreciate.”
"This is one I’ve been wanting to see since I missed it...at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Very fun and enlightening film."
'Sumo East and West' is one of the best documentaries
I have seen. I developed a clear understanding of the topic and genuine interest
in who the characters were and what was happening to them. This film is wonderful
for any fan of Japanese culture, and many history fans would enjoy it as well
considering the excellent archival work done here. The film has everything
from ESPN footage to home videos of the first foreign sumo wrestler to a Thomas
A. Edison film of immigrant workers in Hawaii."
"You like big butts and you cannot lie? Husband-and-wife team Ferne Pearlstein and Robert Edwards got 'em by the boatload, as the enter the lumbering world of sumo to investigate how international participation—particularly by Hawaiians—is changing the sport....the film blends interviews, competition footage, and fascinating archival material, such as a sumo match in a US internment camp during World War II. The result is an engrossing exploration on the meaning of tradition and the inevitability of change. Behind the camera, Pearlstein managed to look past the grotesque and the spectacle to capture the elegance at the heart of the game. Under her direction, every belly-slap, diaper-hitch, and thousand-pound tumble becomes a moment of beauty and grace."
"Pearlstein's experience shows with glorious effect...The film is beautifully photographed. I have rarely seen documentaries that look so visually appealing as this one. The bright, bustling, neon cityscape of modern Tokyo is perfectly juxtaposed against the sometimes calm and sometimes explosive images that make up a Sumotori's life. These images are the ones that linger in your mind long after the film is finished."
"A piercing look inside sumo's legacy."
"This visually arresting film examines not only the history of the ancient art of Sumo wrestling in Japan, where it is viewed as a cultural treasure, but also its future worldwide."
"A stirring, in-depth look at this often closed world. This moving film is not a movie just for hardcore sumo fans....can make you fall in love with sumo."
“Beautifully shot on 16mm by Pearlstein, SUMO EAST AND WEST is a poignant portrait of a culture trying to hold on to something sacred at all costs. Japan has long been the cultural trendsetter of the East, and Pearlstein digs deep to give the viewer a comprehensive look at the changes affecting not just the ancient sport of sumo but Japan as a whole.”
ADDITIONAL REVIEWS / ARTICLES
Hawaii Star Bulletin
Honolulu Advertiser
Cornell Sun
New York Times AsianConnections.com Asian-American Village News The Asian Reporter
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FOR PRESS
Press Release
[download as .pdf]
For further information please contact:
High Resolution Images for Print (Note: all images courtesy of SumoFilms Inc.)
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PRODUCTION NOTES Production Notes [download as .pdf] Four years in the making, SUMO EAST AND WEST offers a rare insight into one of the most esoteric corners of Japanese culture, an institution currently in the throes of dramatic change as a result of increased contact with the West. The world of sumo is highly secretive, bound by tradition, and closed to outsiders. As the US-born grand champion Akebono says in the film, it is a world that even ordinary Japanese people often don’t understand. Producers Ferne Pearlstein and Robert Edwards spent more than a year negotiating permission and arranging the logistics of filming professional sumo in Japan, as well as covering the growing world of amateur sumo from Tokyo to Atlantic City to LA to Hawaii. SUMO EAST AND WEST examines the impact of American wrestlers in what may be the most singularly Japanese of institutions. The rising interest in sumo represents a new manifestation of the fascination with the exoticism of the East, one that often takes the form of objectification of “the Other.” At the same time, the Americanization of sumo is a case study in how the U.S. absorbs a foreign cultural element and gives it a uniquely American spin, often leaving it transformed beyond recognition. The spreading across the globe of sumo is a testament to the influence of Japanese culture. But at what point is sumo no longer sumo?
Production History
Production continued with a shoot in Los Angeles at the North American Amateur Sumo Championships, held amid the blackjack tables of the Hollywood Park Casino. Like Night of the Giants, the LA event was a far cry from the solemnity and ceremony of professional sumo in Japan. The tournament was held on the actual casino floor itself, on a patchwork of judo mats instead of the meticulously crafted dirt dohyo (sumo ring) blessed by a Shinto priest that is a fixture of Japanese sumo. Most of the competitors wore lycra bicycle shorts under their sumo belts in deference to Western discomfort with baring the buttocks, while ESPN’s cameramen ran up and down the mat and the crowd hooted and hollered at a round card girl in hot pants and a tight t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of Asahi, the Japanese beer that is a major worldwide sponsor of sumo. This sort of event represents precisely the kind of Westernized sumo that purists in Japan—chief among them the powerful and conservative Nihon Sumo Kyokai, the governing body for professional sumo—fear will be the fate of the sport should it be exported to the West.
This twenty-mile stretch of the North Shore to which Jacques refers is also home to Wayne Vierra, the film’s main character. A high school football and wrestling star, Vierra was recruited into the feudal world of professional sumo at the age of 18. During his two years in Japan, he rose through the ranks rapidly until his career was abruptly ended by a ruptured pancreas which required emergency surgery. Returning to Hawaii, Wayne endured a lengthy bout of depression before rejoining the sport on the amateur circuit. With a gentle manner that belies his ferocious intensity in the sumo ring, Wayne describes his experience in Japan, how he learned the language, and overcame homesickness for Hawaii to the point where he was homesick for Japan when he had to leave. Melancholy but dignified, Wayne also discusses his love for sumo and dream to lead the first U.S. team in the 2008 Olympics. Other shoots in Hawaii found the filmmakers following Japanese tourists at the Pearl Harbor memorial; filming in Honolulu’s famous Bishop Museum; and conducting interviews with Jan Rowan, mother of Akebono; and Larry Aweau, the 80-year-old eminence grise of island sumo, and the man responsible for recruiting almost all the Hawaiian wrestlers in the pro ranks. Sumo first gained a foothold in the U.S. through the immigration of Japanese laborers to Hawaii in the late 19th century, a tale told in the film by Katsugo Miho, the son of a Japanese language school principal on the island of Maui. Before World War II sumo clubs were numerous in Hawaii and on the West Coast, with an estimated 6,000 wrestlers active in the U.S. and its territories. But the attack on Pearl Harbor brought a sudden and cataclysmic change. As newsreels whipped up public bloodlust against Japan—and as Japanese-Americans were herded into “relocation” camps—sumo enthusiasts buried their sumo belts, trophies, and home movies in their backyards for fear of being branded as disloyal or un-American. Later, as a member of the all-nisei 442d Regimental Combat Team, Miho was among the liberators of Dachau at a time when his father was in a POW camp in the U.S. and his two sisters had returned to their ancestral home city of Hiroshima. (Today Miho is an attorney who negotiates the contracts for all the Hawaii-born sumotori who go to Japan.) Concluding a year-long process of bilingual, cross-cultural, trans-Pacific negotiation, the crew next spent six weeks in Japan filming in Tokyo, Aomori, Fukuoka, and Nagasaki during the spring of 2000. Pearlstein and Edwards shared a single, closet-sized Japanese hotel room for the duration of the shoot, and shockingly, still decided to get engaged the following winter. All filming of sumo in Japan was coordinated through the Nihon Sumo Kyokai (Japan Sumo Association), the famously conservative organization with control over all aspects of pro sumo. Technically, the filmmakers could not even film a random sumo wrestler glimpsed on the streets of Tokyo without the specific permission of the Kyokai. While some in Japan are eager to have amateur sumo broadened to become a worldwide sport and eventually included in the Olympics, the Sumo Kyokai has consciously shrouded sumo in the trappings of ancient Japan in an effort to make it even more traditional and closed to outsiders. The Kyokai is a billion dollar business run entirely by retired sumo wrestlers, most of whom have no formal education beyond junior high. Its desire to preserve sumo’s traditions against the tide of those who would turn it into some sort of Asiatic World Wrestling Federation is both understandable and admirable. Yet the Kyokai is also seen by many as an exclusionary old boys’ club fighting a losing battle with modernity, multiculturalism, and the changing face of life in Japan. The Kyokai officially distances itself from amateur sumo and its Olympic ambitions, taking the position that concessions like a non-dirt sumo ring, the creation of weight classes (which do not exist in pro sumo), and most radically, competition for women render amateur sumo an entirely different sport. Fearing foreign encroachment on its national sport, the Kyokai has lately imposed restrictions on the number of foreigners who may be in any one professional stable, as well as requiring de facto knowledge of Japanese, effectively disallowing the majority of recruits from Hawaii and anywhere else. With the demographic of its fans aging and with the West encroaching, these self-appointed guardians of the purity of sumo are ever vigilant to further erosion, even as more global-minded elements and the pressure of Western interests militate for more, not less, internationalism. Among the key interviews and observational material filmed in Japan were the stories of three most important men in the history of Americans in sumo:
Among the many diverse locations and events filmed were professional sumo at the Ryogoku Kokugikan (Tokyo’s main sumo arena); inside two different professional sumo stables; an invitational amateur sumo tournament in northern Japan, featuring the top national teams from the U.S., Georgia, Russia, Poland, Mongolia, Egypt, and Estonia); schoolboy sumo clubs; the controversial Yasukuni War Memorial Shrine; sumo exhibitions by grade school boys and girls; the sumo fan club at Tokyo Women’s University; NHK Television Studios English language simulcast of sumo; sumo jinku singers; karaoke bars; the Hawaiian restaurant in Tokyo run by owner/chef George Kalima, a retired pro sumo wrestler; the competitive hula class taught by Kalima’s Japanese wife; a festival in the seaside town of Shimoda celebrating the 1853 arrival of Commodore Perry and his black ships; and dozens of interviews. Naturally, not all of this diverse material made it into the finished film. Integral to the Japan shoot was Co-Producer Muto Yoshiharu, a Japanese novelist, journalist, and literary critic who had been a colleague of Pearlstein’s since their days with the Tokyo/Chunichi Shimbun. Muto remained crucial to the success of the project as post-production began in New York City in August 2000, finessing translation and cross-cultural issues in the film.
Style
SUMO EAST AND WEST was shot on Super 16mm film, the picture quality and wide aspect ratio of which is ideal for capturing the visceral nature and visual majesty of the subject, as well as providing maximum resolution for future HDTV broadcast. Appropriate for the Japanese subject matter of the film and impressed with cinematographer Ferne Pearlstein’s previous work, Fuji Films graciously provided film stock at a discount. Editing SUMO EAST AND WEST took over eighteen months, given the complexity of the film and the difficulty of working in both English and Japanese.
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