This is an archive of Grand Sumo Highlights videos captured from the Japan Sumo Association (日本相撲協会 Nihon Sumō Kyōkai) official website shortly after each tournament. We capture these highlights because there is currently no other archive of official highlights available.
The sumo association publishes fifteen highlights after each tournament covering bouts from a range of days. So, there may not be a highlight for every day, but there will be fifteen highlights. In the last few years, there has been no commentary with the highlights in Japanese or English. Each highlight lasts about fifteen seconds on average. The quality is better than typical YouTube captures, and gives one a sense of what the sumo association considers interesting.
Each highlight page (for example) contains fifteen highlights and each highlight displays the day of the tournament, the wrestlers (rikishi), and the winning technique (kimarite) for each highlight. The winner of the bout is marked by an asterisk* and the winning technique is in (parentheses). The archive links to the highlight videos stored on the Internet Archive which has a mandate to keep them available and free to all, forever. The results links to the excellent Sumo Reference data for each basho.
There are six official, professional sumo tournaments (honbasho) held each year in Japan featuring wrestlers from anywhere in the world. Tournaments are held on odd-numbered months in Tokyo (Jan, May, Sep), Osaka (Mar), Nagoya (Jul), and Fukuoka (Nov). Each tournament lasts fifteen days (Sunday to Sunday). These highlights cover only the top (makuuchi) division.
You can watch televised coverage of sumo (with English commentary) as it is happening on NHK World. This is currently the best way to enjoy sumo outside of Japan or scheduled NHK coverage where available.
Sumo is a beautiful and exciting sport with a long history and rich traditions. It takes only a few minutes a day for a couple of weeks, every other month, to keep up with it. I hope this archive helps others to enjoy and maintain this tradition.
Thank you to Kintamayama and Jason's All Sumo channels for their outstanding and tenacious sumo coverage that inspired this project, and the Internet Archive for hosting and collection support.
See also: