How the Japino sumo wrestler touched my heart

One recent heartwarming segment in Rated K had to do with a half-Filipino, half-Japanese sumo wrestler who surprised and showed his love and gratitude for his Filipino mother who single-handedly raised him and his siblings.

The episode struck a chord with me because everyone knows how I love and honor my Nanay. It was touching to see the sumo wrestler, Masunoyama, surprised his mother with a flash mob and a banner that read, “Dahil ikaw ang nanay namin.” The Rated K segment is one of the many projects lined-up under the long-term collaboration between ABS-CBN and NHK Television of Japan which entered into a co-production venture. It is based on an NHK segment titled Happy Surprise which features different people who want to surprise a special person they care about by setting up a faux documentary.

They came up with the storyline for the Rated K episode when host Korina Sanchez went to Japan to feature Filipinos living in Japan. Masunoyama’s Filipino mother Maria Christine accompanied Korina, who visited Tokyo’s famous tourist attractions and landmarks. The whole time, Maria Christine was under the impression that this was for a documentary to be shown in Rated K and had no idea that there was a surprise waiting for her at the end of it. While being interviewed, she was suddenly surprised by a flash mob of sumo wrestlers led by her son, which made her cry. This was their “happy surprise.”

ABS-CBN business unit head Linggit Tan shared the story of how the collaboration between the network and NHK Television came about. “This venture started last year when the NHK people came over to do a feature with Ivy Beldad, a Filipino nurse. They came to the Philippines to give her a surprise. She was the first foreigner they featured in Happy Surprise. So we started talking, and when they showed me tapes of Happy Surprise, sabi ko, ‘This is a really very feel-good segment. It’s very heartwarming and it really shows appreciation for people who have done so much in your life. It’s a very Filipino sentiment.’”

After several months, an NHK representative came back to meet with counterparts from ABS-CBN. “They said they wanted to enter into a long-term relationship with ABS-CBN,” says Linggit. “It’s also what we wanted — not just a one-time project, but a long-term relationship where we can help each other because we know that NHK is one of the biggest television networks in Asia — and we know that we can learn from them. They have lots of documentaries and high-quality programs, and we know that they can help us.”

Linggit says the NHK team also wanted to do something for the Philippines because “Filipinos are good people. They told me that the Japanese government really wants to help the Filipino people because they saw Filipinos not leaving after the tsunami. They helped Japan, they helped the people come back and rise again. So their government would like to return the favor by doing something together. Happy Surprise was a very good venue for working together.”

Hiroshi Yamamoto of NHK expressed that their team was also very touched by the segment. “Happy Surprise is a core part of an NHK weekly program broadcast every Saturday night and it has that very unique concept, that is, to surprise someone special with a flash mob. So this time, the Filipino mom living in Tokyo was the target.”
According to Yamamoto, the place where the flash mob was conducted is a temple and normally, flash mobs and big crowds are not allowed to conduct activities there. But for this, they were surprisingly cooperative as the sumo wrestlers hid themselves behind the walls of the temple. Then all of a sudden, the sumo wrestlers started dancing and said, “Thank you very much.” After that, people started shedding tears. “Everybody cried,” enthused Yamamoto.

The segment will not be the last under this new partnership. “There are a lot of things that we are discussing,” revealed Linggit. “It’s a long relationship and we intend to make the partnership a really good one,” she says.