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Two Tokyo neighborhoods to gather on bridge and shift their recognized border through tug-of-war

Casey Baseel a few minute ago
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Sibling ward rivalry doesn’t need solid ground for its bragging-rights battlefield.

My parents were very strict about the Baseel brothers not fighting with each other while we were growing up, but I’ve been told that it’s not unusual for siblings to squabble. And so it is that Tokyo’s Sumida and Taito Wards, neighbors who have been sister wards since 1977, have begun meeting every year and attempting to expand their territory at the other’s expense by shifting the symbolic borderline between the two.

Fittingly, the two parties want this annual contest to take place on their border, but that presents a bit of a problem, since flowing between Sumida and Taito is the Sumida River. They’ve managed to work out a solution, though, and so later this month the Sakurabashi Bridge will once again become the scene of the Sumida River Tug-of-War Tournament.

The exact mid-point of the bridge is one of the very few publicly accessible points along the wards’ borderline, and the only one exclusively for pedestrian crossings. So since 2024, Sumida and Taito have been sending teams of representatives for a series of tug-of-war battles to be waged on Sakurabashi, with the agreement that both wards will recognize that the border has been moved by one meter (3.3 feet) in the direction of the losing ward, giving the winner that much larger of a domain.

▼ Video of the 2025 Sumida River Tug-of-War Tournament

For the last two years, Taito has won the tournament, as documented in this illustration showing the border in 2023 (yellow line), 2024 (dotted red line), and 2025 (solid red line)

▼ The Sakurabashi Bridge, with the Tokyo Skytree standing tall on the Sumida Ward side of the river

It should be noted that while Tokyo’s wards do each have some level of autonomy, the municipal-level administration doesn’t actually let its component parts go around redrawing their boundaries, and so the territorial prize at stake in the Sumida River Tug-of-War Tournament is really a symbolic one (this is also why the tournament is followed by a friendly celebration at a riverside terrace). The length of the bridge also means that neither ward is likely to reach the opposite riverbank, barring some sort of highly localized protein deficiency that leaves one group of residents significantly weaker than the other for several decades. Nevertheless, there’s civic pride at stake, and Sumida is no doubt eager to avenge its two consecutive losses.

Rather than recruiting entire teams, participants apply to their ward individually, with organizers assembling 12 teams, including two children’s teams, of 10 members each from the pool. On the day of the tournament, opposing teams will compete in a best-two-out-of-three format, and in order to prevent a 6-6 tie, each ward also puts together an all-star team, made up of members of its 12 others, for a 13th match.

This year’s Sumida River Tug-of-War Tournament is scheduled to start at 10:30 a.m. on November 15 atop the Sakurabashi Bridge, which is roughly a 15-minute walk from Asakusa Station in Taito Ward or Oshiage Station in Sumida Ward. It’ll also be the first year for the broadcasting club of Taito’s Iwakura High School to be on-site providing live color commentary, which should give the whole event some good “crazy anime series sports episode” energy.

▼ Sakurabashi Bridge

As of this writing, Sumida Ward is still accepting applicants through the event’s official website, but even if you’re not pulling, spectators are welcome to come out and cheer one, or both, of the sides on, with no admission tickets required.

Source: Sumida River Tug-of-War Tournament official website, Sumida Tourism Association, Sumida Keizai Shimbun via Yahoo! Japan News
Images: Sumida River Tug-of-War Tournament
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