Sumo Wrestling Baseball T-Shirt

The spoken word sumō goes back to the verb sumau/sumafu, meaning 'compete' or 'fight'. The written word goes back to the expression sumai no sechi (相撲の節), which was a wrestling competition at the imperial court during the Heian period. The characters from sumai, or sumō today, mean 'to strike each other'. There is also an alternate spelling of 角力, which can be found in the Nihon Shoki. Here, the first character means 'corner', but serves as a phonetic element as one reading of it is sumi, while the second character means 'force'.