Sumō Wrestlers Practicing

A color ōban woodblock print of 1866 in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this Sumō Wrestlers Practicing belongs to Kuniaki II's body of sumō-e (sumō prints) that he produced from the early 1860s into the 1880s. Sumō prints were a distinctive subgenre of late-Edo woodblock printing, collected alongside actor portraits by enthusiasts of the period's two great public spectacles. The composition pictures wrestlers engaged in keiko — the formal training sessions held within the sumō stables (heya), where senior wrestlers (sekitori) sparred with the younger ranked wrestlers in repeated bouts of pushing, gripping, and throwing technique. The 1866 dating places the print in the late Tokugawa years, when the established sumō association (the predecessor of the modern Japan Sumo Association) was based in Edo and the principal venues were the precincts of Eko-in temple and other temple-affiliated tournament grounds. Kuniaki II's sumō prints stand alongside those of Kunisada I, Kuniyoshi, and Yoshitsuya as the principal visual record of late-Edo sumō; his contributions document the wrestlers and the training and tournament conventions of the immediate pre-Meiji generation.