The Topknot: Chonmage and Oicho
Every wrestler wears his hair in a knot. Not every wrestler is allowed the same knot. Once you can tell the two apart, you can read a man's standing off the top of his head — which is exactly what the arrangement is for.
The general word is 髷 (mage) — a topknot. The everyday form worn by wrestlers is called 丁髷 (chonmage).
There is also a second, more elaborate form: 大銀杏 (oicho), named after the ginkgo leaf, because the end of the knot is spread out into a fan shape across the top of the head.
The two shapes
Who may wear which
The plain chonmage is the ordinary hairstyle of a wrestler, worn all the time by everyone whose hair is long enough.
The oicho is not everyday wear. It belongs to the sekitori — the salaried wrestlers of the top two divisions — and they wear it when they compete.
There is one regular exception. When a high-ranked makushita wrestler is brought up to fill a juryo bout, he wears the oicho for it as well. So the hair follows the bout he is in, not only the division he is listed in.
This is the same idea as everything else in stable life: sumo prefers to make status visible rather than leave it on paper. The banzuke says who is above whom; the hair says it again, in the room.
A wrestler does not tie his own hair. That is the work of the 床山 (tokoyama), the specialist hairdressers of sumo — who, like the wrestlers themselves, belong to a stable. They are a profession within sumo in their own right, with their own ranks, and their work is why the hair looks the same at the end of a bout as it did at the start.
Why it matters that it can be cut off
Growing the hair takes years, and losing it is the formal end of a career.
When a wrestler retires, a ceremony called 断髪式 (danpatsushiki) is held. People connected to him — supporters, seniors, family — each take one snip, and the last cut is made by his 親方 (oyakata), the head of his stable. When the knot comes off, he is no longer a wrestler.
That is why the hair is not decoration. It is the visible form of the thing being given up.
The trap for new viewers
The topknot is often described as a link to samurai hairstyles, and there is a resemblance. But be careful about treating sumo's version as a preserved historical costume. It is a working hairstyle in a living sport, maintained daily by professionals, with rules about who wears what — not a museum piece.
A practical detail
The knot also matters to the rules. Pulling an opponent's mage is forbidden, and the penalty does not depend on whether it was meant: a wrestler who pulls the topknot loses the bout by disqualification, accident or not. It sits alongside the other ways of losing covered in non-techniques.
What to watch for
During a broadcast, look at the top of a wrestler's head as he steps up onto the clay.
If the knot ends in a fan spread across the crown, he is one of the men the sport treats as having arrived. If it is a plain folded knot, he is not — yet. You will have read his standing before the commentator has said his name.
The other thing a wrestler is given rather than chooses.