What is Nakizumo? Japanese ritual ceremony where sumo wrestlers try to make newborn babies cry
400-year-old ceremony is believed to bring good health
HULKING sumo wrestlers try to make babies cry in a bizarre Japanese ceremony dating back 400 years.
The traditional Nakizumo Festival is meant to bring the tots good health and ward off evil spirits.
What is Nakizumo?
Nakizumo or Naki Sumo is a festival held at a temple in Tokyo and also at other sites across Japan in the spring.
Babies born in the past year are brought to a makeshift sumo ring where wrestlers hold them aloft.
The athletes compete to make the babies cry the fastest by grunt, pulling faces and gently jiggling the babies while shouting "naki naki" - cry in Japanese.
If that doesn't work, a referee steps in wearing a scary mask, which usually does the trick.
If both babies cry at the same time, the loudest is declared the winner.
Once they start to sob, the wrestlers hold the babies higher so their cries are closer to heaven.
Meanwhile their parents say a prayer for their good health.
The ceremony, which dates back about 400 years, is based on the Japanese proverb "Naku ko wa sodatsu", or “crying babies grow fastest”.
It takes place all over Japan but is most famously performed by the student sumos of Tokyo’s Sensoji Buddhist temple.
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