SUMOS (Catherine Hyland, 2018) HD

The Nomadic Roots of Mongolian Sumo Success How does a landlocked country with a population of 3 million manage to maintain its identity against the hyper-nationalism of neighbours like Russia, China and Japan? This is the question posed in Sumos, a project that focusses on Mongolia’s astonishing success at Sumo Wrestling. Between 2003 and 2014, the country dominated sumo, providing successive champions, (or yokozuna in Japan). It’s a success that has made sumo wrestling a path to fame, riches and a particular kind of glory for young boys in Mongolia, a tough, yet climatically fragile land of 3 million. All the boys filmed now live in Ulaanbaatar, the nation’s capital, and many of them are from families who have recently migrated to the capital to survive the disastrously cold winters that have devastated the herds of livestock they once tended to survive. The resulting influx of people has changed the geographic landscape of the city into a patchwork quilt of Soviet-era tower blocks and parcels of land filled with the gers (or yurts) of recent migrants to the city. These changes are causing economic and environmental changes to the city (UlaanBataar has some of the worst spikes in air pollution in the world), but despite this the city still remains a major source of combatants for the Japanese sumo wrestling industry. “Once a Japanese reporter visited and was astonished,” says Davaagiin Batbayar. “He said it’s very weird how in Ulaanbaatar a little over one million people reside, and that all the great Mongolian Sumo wrestlers are basically from the same neighborhood. It was then that I realized that it was very weird how a few kids from the countryside who had a mere interest for the sport could be dominating Sumo champions.”