Playful PlayStation team celebrates local Ryogoku culture and takes a PS5 to Kanda Shrine for a traditional autumn event.

There are certain parts of Tokyo that, upon hearing their names, bring up an instant mental image of something the surrounding neighborhood is known for. You can’t hear “Akihabara” without thinking of anime and video games, or “Tsukiji” without thinking of sushi.

Though it might not be quite as internationally famous as the two above examples, for the local population in Japan Ryogoku has just as strong and clear an image as it conjures: sumo. It’s where you’ll find Ryogoku Kokugikan, Japan’s most prestigious sumo arena, and dozens of sumo training stables as well as restaurants managed by retired sumo stars are located in the neighborhood too. Even walking through Ryogoku Station, you’ll see photos, statues, and illustrations of sumo wrestlers, and recently an especially eye-catching image was added: a giant sumo wrestler stopping a train with his bare hands.

Judging from the E259-model train he goes up against, it seems that this top-knotted colossus has been hanging out on the Sobu Line platform. In the video above, the digital sumo wrestler is just minding his own business until he notices a train is pulling in. He then turns towards it and squares up his shoulders, drops his hips, and extends his hands out in front of him, catching the train with his palms and visually bringing it to a stop as he plants his feet and slides backwards from the impact.

So why’d he go to all this trouble? Because it turns out that in addition to the digital sumo wrestler, there’s also a digital kitty on the platform, and he wanted to make sure it didn’t get hit when the train was pulling in.

The clever mix of digital artistry and physical perspective is the work of Sony’s PlayStation team, though it’s meant as a general celebration of technological creativity instead of promoting any specific game series or character.

This isn’t the only nod to traditional Japanese culture the PlayStation team has been up to recently either. Wednesday marked the five-year anniversary of the PlayStation 5, and with the console now five years old, Sony decided to take it to Tokyo’s Kanda Shrine to celebrate Shichi-Go-San.

Shichi-Go-San is a festival held every autumn in which parents bring their three, five, and seven-year-old children to Shinto shrines to pray for their continued health and prosperity. The family usually gets dressed up for the occasion and takes a few commemorative photos while at the shrine, and so Sony, like any proud parent, did too.

▼ They even picked an appropriate shrine for their visit, as Kanda Shrine (also known as Kanda Myojin) is the closest major shrine to Akihabara, and also hosted a special art event on the PS5’s original launch date.

Getting back to the Ryogoku Station sumo wrestler, unfortunately, it’s a limited-time display, and will only be around until November 14. With the design sorted out, though, it seems like it’d be easy to install again the next time there’s a major sumo tournament or other big event going on in Ryogoku, and the digital format means updating it with new reasons for the wrestler to be stopping the train would be pretty simple too, so hopefully we’ll be seeing it again someday.

Source, images: Twitter/PlayStation_jp
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