It is a sport with a history stretching back more than two millennia; its most ardent fans have included emperors and feudal lords; and to be cradled in the arms of one of its practitioners as a child supposedly guarantees a life of robust health.
Yet just as the 700 members of Japan’s sumo fraternity prepare for 15 days of bouts this Sunday in Nagoya, Japan’s national sport is fearing for its future after if failed to attract a single new recruit for the first time in its history. The Japan Sumo Association was forced to cancel the recruitment tests planned for Monday.
”It’s a pity — it’s sad … we may be seeing a similar situation in the future, too.” Katsutoshi Hasegawa, a former wrestler in charge of organising the Nagoya contest, told the Asahi newspaper. While the tests ahead of the Nagoya tournament routinely fail to attract many applicants, sumo elders admitted that the sport that offers potential rikishi the prospect of popular adulation, a comfortable living and a place among the exclusive group of champions is struggling in an era in which baseball and football rule in the playground.
Trials held before the Osaka tournament in March traditionally attract the bulk of new recruits because they come at the end of the academic year, when many school leavers are considering careers. But even the March intake has failed to exceed 100 for the past seven years.
The attempt to bring more Japanese youngsters into the ring — now dominated by foreign rikishi — won’t have been helped by the death last week of Takashi Saito, a 17-year-old wrestler, in suspicious circumstances.
His stable initially said that Saito, who wrestled under the name Tokitaizan, died from a heart attack after a rigorous training session. But it was revealed that the teenager appeared to have sustained as yet unexplained injuries — including cigarette burns — and that he had run away from the stable at least once.
Experts agree there is a thin line between discipline and abuse. ”[The trainers] have all been through it themselves and only they know how to teach someone to reach inside himself and find that extra strength,” Doreen Simmons, a sumo broadcaster for NHK television, said.
The requirements for new recruits to sumo are hardly demanding. They must have completed formal education up to 15, weigh at least 75kg and be at least 1,73m tall.
Current wrestlers complain that today’s Japanese children simply aren’t cut out for the life in a sumo stable, where apprentices must live in spartan conditions and submit themselves to the daily grind of training, followed by the leftovers from huge lunches of rice and stew.
”Nothing can truly prepare you,” Asashoryu, a grand champion from Mongolia, said in an interview with Metropolis magazine. ”It’s really tough. It’s a communal life that hasn’t hanged all that much, I believe. In a sumo stable you have to obey your seniors. Nowadays there all these computer games, which children play alone and only exercise their thumbs.”
Simmons agrees that Japanese children lack the motivation required to tough out a few years in the lower ranks. ”They have more options in life,” she said. ”Their parents want them to go on to further education instead, or at least get an easier job”. Lifestyle aside, sumo’s reputation has taken a pounding in recent years by allegations of match-fixing, most recently by a weekly magazine that is now the target of legal action by the sumo association.
The rise of a generation of foreign bad-boy wrestlers has deprived the sport of its mystique, much to the chagrin of traditionalists. While a grand champion, or yokozuna, can expect to earn a basic salary of about $24 000 a month — and many times more that in prize money — trainees receive only a small allowance and a space in which to sleep.
”In sumo you have to get right to the top to get the rewards,” Simmons said. ”It’s not like football where you can be transferred and your value rises. Once you join a stable, that’s it. You’re stuck with it for the rest of your career.”
Explainer: how things changed
Sumo is mentioned in the Kojiki, (Record of Ancient Matters) Japan’s oldest surviving work of literature in 712, but the sport is said to be more than 2 000 years old.
Foreigners made their presence felt in the 1990s with the rise of the American trio of Konishiki, Akebono and Musashimaru. The departure of the popular Japanese brothers Wakanohana and Takanohana ushered in a period of domination by Asian and European wrestlers. The two reigning grand champions, Asashoryu and Hakuho, are Mongolian.
There are about 60 foreign wrestlers today; the Nagoya tournament, which begins on Sunday, will be the first in which more overseas than Japanese appear in the top four ranks.
The rules are simple. The loser is the first to touch the ground with any part of his body other than the soles of his feet, or the first to be pushed out of the ring. Wrestlers wear simple mawashi, a satin belt several metres long that is wound round the waist and nether regions before being tucked in.
Match-fixing claims are not new. In 2000 Keisuke Itai, a former wrestler, claimed that in the 1980s up to 80% of top bouts were rigged. Another ex-wrestler died in 1996 as he was about to go public with match-fixing claims. His fellow whistleblower died a few hours later, of the same respiratory illness in the same hospital. Despite suspicions they were murdered, police never found any evidence of wrongdoing. – Guardian Unlimited Â