A Big Gentle Man

The sight was unusual because you seldom see a man wearing yukata on the Shinkansen, the Japanese bullet train. You would more likely come upon a woman in kimono, but even that would be extremely rare. Sojourning nihonjin typically wear casual travel attire or the ubiquitous dark suits that mark traveling business men.

Nearing the end of a pleasant weekend in Osaka and Nara, we stood by on the Osaka platform as the train scheduled ten minutes before ours disembarked its passengers. The yukata-wearing gentleman caught my eye as he completely filled the train's doorway. Perhaps his huge body mass, atypical of slighter Japanese frames, first drew my gaze. My mind quickly associated the yukata, the roughly 300 pound build, and traditional hair bun to identify this man as a sumo wrestler. Encountering one of these professional athletes on a train platform in Japan would be as noteworthy as spying a professional ballplayer at the departure gate of an American airline.

I wondered if a sumo tournament had come to Osaka, all the more puzzled why a man of such stature would arrive by Shinkansen. Sumo wrestlers enjoy the elite status in Japan similar to professional athletes in the U.S.  Perhaps, I thought, this man is juryo, like a U.S. minor league baseball player, as opposed to a makuuchi, which is the higher division of most accomplished banzuke. In the U.S., one might see a minor league ballplayer traveling commercial air, although probably sporting a muscle shirt instead of yukata.

The man who must be sumo moved very slowly through the doorway, pushing a wheelchair ahead of him. "Perhaps he is injured," I mused. But once he was on the platform, he raised his hand to the official whose job is to keep the trains moving on time. The gesture clearly said chotto matte, "Wait a minute." Then he turned to assist someone disembarking behind him. His traveling companion was a thin, frail man who moved painfully slowly with the shuffling gait so typical of one stricken with Parkinson's Disease. (I know it well.) Then the huge man very gently assisted the impaired man off the train and helped him into the wheelchair. Only when his companion was fully secured did he signal the railway official to release the train on its way.

As the bullet train left the station, the sumo man pushed his fragile companion in the wheelchair towards the elevator. Here was a full slice of the human condition. This athletic behemoth, who devotes his entire adult life to heaving other big men onto the dirt, was now very gently and humanely engaged in the care of his frail and failing father.

As the enfeebled father and burly son slowly left the platform, I recalled another time and place. A small tear came to my eye.