Vancouver sumo club aims to push the ancient sport into modern times

Jon Azpiri · CBC News

· Posted: May 20, 2025 10:07 AM EDT | Last Updated: May 20

Eva Yu said she started watching sumo matches past twelvemonth and rapidly became a self-described "super fan."

"I tin speech everlastingly astir sumo," Yu said.

Her involvement successful Japan's nationalist athletics yet brought her to Sumo Sundays, which describes itself arsenic "Canada's lone all-bodies sumo club."

On Monday, Yu entered the sumo-wrestling circle, known arsenic a dohyo, to vie successful the 2025 Vancouver Basho, an amateur sumo accumulation hosted by Sumo Sundays astatine the Vancouver Japanese Language School and Japanese Hall successful the Downtown Eastside. 

WATCH | Sumo Sundays hosts its 2nd tournament:

Yu said the modulation from instrumentality to rival was "exhilarating," and she adjacent went location with immoderate hardware. She said she won the competition's Fighting Spirit Award, successful portion due to the fact that of her pre-bout ritual, which was a tribute to recently-retired pro sumo wrestler Hokutofuji Daiki.

"Hearing the cheers, proceeding the soundlessness earlier the bout, it each amps you up conscionable for that infinitesimal of transportation with your sparring partner," Yu said.

Sumo Sundays offers drop-ins and workshops to thatch the past athletics — 1 that has for centuries been the domain of physically-imposing men — to radical of each shapes and sizes.

Sumo Sundays co-founder Kayla Isomura said they archetypal got progressive successful the athletics astatine the Powell Street Festival, a solemnisation of Japanese Canadian arts and culture, which has for decades held sumo exhibitions organized by a radical named the Sumo Fun Club. 

Isomura's archetypal attempt at sumo consisted of "just flailing astir successful the ringing astatine Powell Street," they said.

"But successful the past fewer years since we started Sumo Sundays, we've been capable to thatch different radical antithetic sumo skills and doing it successful an all-bodies, gender-inclusive environment," Isomura said, who added that Sumo Sundays present organizes the Powell Street Festival's sumo exhibition.

Isomura's fellow co-founder Shane Pecknold said 1 of his goals is to beryllium that sumo — like different forms of wrestling — can beryllium practised by radical of immoderate size and "isn't conscionable for large people." 

Weighing successful astatine astir 155 pounds, helium said radical are often amazed to perceive helium participates successful sumo. 

"Typically I hear, 'You don't person the close assemblage for it,'" Pecknold told Radio-Canada past year. "I cognize different. I consciousness like not conscionable sumo, but any sport should beryllium unfastened to anybody who wants to play."

He said one of the things that drew him to sumo is the Japanese conception of ganbaru, the enactment of doing one's champion and persevering through adversity. 

Isomura said the nine aims to thatch sumo's ancient traditions and techniques to radical who mightiness different deliberation the sport was not for them. 

"You don't truly person to beryllium immoderate circumstantial way, you don't person to beryllium ace athletic, you don't person to beryllium ace strong," Isomura said. "A batch of the clip we're conscionable present having fun, rolling astir connected the level laughing."