Kimarite: How Sumo Names Every Win
Most sports record who won. Sumo records how — with an official name, chosen from a fixed list, announced to the building within seconds of the bout ending.
A bout ends. The referee points his fan. And then, almost immediately, a name is announced.
That name is the 決まり手 (kimarite) — literally the "deciding hand". It is the official description of how the winner won, and it is recorded alongside the result.
Once you know this is happening, the end of every bout stops being just an outcome. It becomes a one-word summary of what you have watched.
Why a sport would do this
In how a match is won we said there are only two ways to lose: leave the ring, or touch down inside it. That is true, and it is also the reason the names exist.
Two rules produce an enormous number of ways to reach them. A man can be pushed out, walked out, thrown down, tripped, twisted, lifted, or simply pulled off balance — and every one of those arrives at the same two endings.
Those two conditions describe how a bout ends. The kimarite describes how it got there.
How many are there?
More than eighty are officially recognised, grouped by the kind of movement involved.
You do not need them. In practice a small number account for most of what you will see, and you can follow sumo perfectly well knowing five or six.
The comparison that teaches the rest
The fastest way in is to learn one pair properly rather than a list badly.
Start with oshidashi and yorikiri. Both end with a man being moved backwards out of the ring, and they are separated by a single question: did the winner have a grip?
Once that distinction is in your head, a surprising amount of the list organises itself around it.
When the winner did nothing
Some results are not techniques. If a wrestler steps out of the ring by himself, or loses his balance and goes down without being thrown, the win is still recorded — but under a name that says the loser did it to himself.
The best known is 勇み足 (isamiashi), where the attacker steps out first while driving his opponent to the edge. It is covered in how a match is won.
These are officially separated from the techniques, which tells you something about the sport's attitude: winning because your opponent failed is not the same as winning because of what you did.
The name is announced in Japanese, quickly, and it is easy to miss on a stream. It also appears in the on-screen result and in every printed record of the bout. If you are watching with English commentary, the commentators will usually translate it within a few seconds.
What this changes for you
Before: two men wrestle, one of them wins.
After: two men wrestle, one of them wins by yorikiri — and because you know what that word means, you know he had a grip, walked his opponent backwards, and put him over the bales rather than pushing him down or throwing him.
The bout was over in moments. The name gives it a shape you can remember.
The two you will hear most, and the single question that separates them.