12th April 2026 - Sanctuary
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Lately, I have been watching Sanctuary. This is a Japanese TV series 
about sumo wrestling. We follow a young person who joined sumo after 
being a street hoodlum so that he can earn and save money. His parents 
have split following a bankrupt business. The father, a timid chap who 
obesses over his garden and the mother is a bit of a drugged out tart. 
The story mostly follows the street hoodlum and a reporter who is 
following the stable. This reporter was a political reporter but ended 
up in sumo following an incident. She does not know anything about 
sumo which is helpful as the viewer learns alongside her. The hoodlum 
becomes Enno. 

There is a lot of harsh hazing activities with bullying rife between 
wrestlers. When things go wrong, the stable master does a lot of 
hitting too. It shows the harsh reality of young men living in a 
dormitory without much supervision. The reporter provides a suitably 
shocked response to all of this, which helps prove that this is not 
normal outside of the sumo world. 

Another set of story lines relates to how the stable masters all 
bicker and politick their way through old arguements from when they 
fought each other. We have some stable masters who are driven to drive 
Enno from sumo as he is a cocky munchkin and his stable master had 
prevented them from reaching the top rank, Yokozuna. There are other 
story lines about dignity, the meaning of sumo, intuition and honour. 
What I like about these are glimpses into people's lives and how they 
came to be where they were. For many, there was a lack of education 
due to caring for parents or trying to earn money to stay afloat. 

There are lots of sumo cliches. People seem to say they are trying to 
do their style of sumo or encouraging the foundations like shiko. It 
is silly but aligns with the usual nonsense rikishi, wrestlers, say in 
interviews. The story lines seem predicatable but remain intriging. 
There are lots of betrayals and learning about how fundamentals will 
help the characters achieve their goals. Some characters are almost 
cartoonish. The rival stable masters in particular. One is a gross 
person who berates and confounds at every opportunity when prompted by 
the other, a frustrated worm of a man who jumps in delight or kicks 
things in anger. 

One of the great parts of this are the bouts. There are some great 
fights which are well filmed. I can only wonder as to how someone put 
these together. It gets the thrill of a fight perfectly. 

If you want to learn about sumo or have a glimpse into the culture, 
this is a great TV series to watch. I found it a fun watch and worth 
the 8 episodes at 30 or so minutes each. It is better with the 
Japanese sound and English subtitles but then again, I don't mind 
subtitles. As ever, I remain glad to not be a rikishi but I sort of 
feel the need to do some shiko.