Sumo wrestlers use a Mawashi, a heavy fabric loincloth that opposing wrestlers utilize while performing different manoeuvres to seize and hold onto to pick up an advantage during matches. Mawashi is basically a belt that a sumo wrestler wears during training or in competition. The mawashi is a thick, 30-foot-long belt that a wrestler wraps around his body various times and securely hitches at the back. Sumo wrestlers believe life experience disappears after the wash, so mawashi is never washed. During competitions, top-ranked wrestlers wear different-coloured silk mawashi while lower-ranked wrestlers are constrained to black cotton. Sumo wrestlers can only use the silk mawashi during competitive bouts either ranking competitions or touring displays

But sumo wrestlers also have a more elaborate ceremonial dress. It consists of an ornate apron that is inserted into the mawashi. The apron, or keshō-mawashi, is worn at the ring entering ceremony. The silk ‘belt’ opens out at one end into a large apron which is usually heavily embroidered and with thick tassels at the bottom. The keshō-mawashi may advertise the produce of a sponsor of the rikishi or be a gift from one of the rikishi’s support groups. Alternatively, some foreign-born rikishi bear their national flag on their kesho-mawashi. Some aprons even show funny pictures or scenes inspired by modern popular culture. Others refer to the wrestler’s ring name. Popular rikishi may be given many of these keshō-mawashi.

In the Edo period the kesho-mawashi also served as the wrestler’s fighting mawashi. However, as the aprons become more ornate, eventually the two functions were split apart. In this period wrestlers were normally sponsored by feudal daimyo or overlords, whose clan crest would therefore appear on the kesho-mawashi.