Following the legacy of the former Sumo Fun Club, Sumo Sundays was founded out of the Powell Street Festival, which celebrates Japanese Canadian arts and culture. For 40+ years, Sumo Fun Club, a group of nisei and shin-issei Japanese Canadians, organized an amateur sumo exhibition at the festival. Always drawing the largest crowd, the torch was passed onto Powell Street Festival when Sumo Fun Club members began to age out. From 2015 to 2022, the festival coordinated the exhibition and a newly-introduced workshop teaching the basics of sumo with the support of volunteers.

Two of these volunteers were Lydia Luk and Shane Pecknold. As Lydia recalls, they stumbled into coordinating sumo by accident. Only having tried sumo once at the festival, they attended a meeting to hear out a request for people to take over for Sumo Fun Club, and to their surprise, they were one of the volunteers selected by the Sumo Fun Club. On the other hand, Shane already carried some sumo knowledge and experience. Together, Lydia and Shane would become central to maintaining Sumo Fun Club’s legacy.

When Lydia and Shane got involved with sumo coordination at Powell Street Festival, this was also the time when an official women’s bracket was introduced into the exhibition. It was 2015, and as the two were getting their footing (or “learning on the spot,” as Lydia once said — “It’s very Powell Street. You just show up and you start doing things you don’t understand, but the spirit is there.”), Kayla Isomura tried sumo for the first time.

Growing up only watching sumo at the festival, Kayla found their way into the ring out of curiosity. For years after, they would participate for fun, with no other training or experience. Kayla would later describe this as “flailing in the ring.” But things changed one summer when Shane organized a few meetups in China Creek Park.

Kayla attended a few of these meetups in support of Shane (c. 2018 or 2019), but their learnings wouldn’t come into play until the 2022 festival. After a pause due to the pandemic, muscle memory kicked in and Kayla used their learnings from Shane those few years earlier to win the big bag of rice at Powell Street Festival.

Shane had long dreamed of an indoor space to practice sumo and for a period of time, other community members, such as Ryan Cousineau, tried. However, following the 2022 Powell Street Festival, something clicked for Shane, Lydia and Kayla. Together, they identified the need for more learning opportunities throughout the year.

This desire culminated in the first Sumo Sundays session at the Vancouver Japanese Language School (VJLS) following the 2022 festival. Taking place in the Downtown Eastside and former Paueru Gai neighbourhood, Sumo Sundays has carried on tradition with its own spin.

Since that first drop-in, Sumo Sundays continues to host monthly sessions at VJLS. We also host the PSF exhibition and facilitate their annual workshops. In 2024, we partnered with PSF to organize the first exhibition outside the festival with support from local Japanese Canadian sponsors.

Since 2023, we have extended partnerships to other organizations in the Japanese Canadian community, including hosting children’s programs at the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre (2023), hosting a demonstration at the Maple Ridge Bon Odori (2024), providing in-kind donations to Kikiai Collaborative (2024-2025) and leading high school workshops with VJLS (2025).

We recognize that sumo is traditionally both a Japanese and men’s sport. While our team has in-depth knowledge of sumo and has historical and cultural connections to Japan, we acknowledge that our take on the sport is non-traditional and comes from an alternative (diverse) perspective.

Further, we acknowledge that our work takes place on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations; also former 100-mile exclusion zone; and current home to residents of the Downtown Eastside. We aim to approach the neighbourhood with respect in each of these regards and hope you do, too.

And finally, we thank the Vancouver Japanese Language School and Powell Street Festival Society for their ongoing support in making it possible for us to organize our events.