It is one of the few traditional sports not solely the preserve of the samurai class,[8] being popular among peasants and sake brewers.[2] Both professions valued the manual labor of young people, and similar practices called kyokumochi also existed, which involved lifting sacks of rice or barrels of sake.[3][9] The sporting aspect of stone-lifting developed in Edo around the seventeenth century, likely evolving from the sack-lifting contests of the stevedores and labourers.[5] Historically, the lifting of strength-stones was exclusively practiced by men.[10]