Weak fighters, poor technique, many injuries at the big fall sumo tournament in Tokyo in September – according to many critics, Japan’s national sport is in a deep crisis. Spectators will soon turn their backs on sumo wrestling if nothing changes, predicts a critic in an editorial in Japan’s national daily Sankei Shimbun. The tournament in Tokyo is symbolic of the crisis.
After 15 days of fighting at the Ryogoku Kokugikan Stadium, Tamawashi Ishiro triumphed. Before the competition, the Mongolian was considered a rather unspectacular athlete and had only been classified as “Hiramaku”, the fifth highest class in sumo wrestling. At 37, Tamawashi became the oldest winner of a “basho” since 1958. “Basho” means “real tournament”, where sumo wrestlers’ promotion and relegation is decided.
Tamawashi receives the Emperor’s Cup
“The decline in the quality of sumo bouts must not continue,” said the Sankei Shimbun editorial. Virtually all wrestlers in the top two categories – “yokozuna” and “ozeki” – lost their bouts early and were eliminated from the race for the trophy, the Emperor’s Cup. The training program must also be critically examined. The tournament’s highest-ranked sumo wrestler, Mongolian Terunofuji Haruo, had to withdraw on the tenth day of the competition due to injuries to both knees.
Traditionalists call the shots
“I’m afraid sumo wrestling is a thing of the past in Japan,” sports journalist Yoichi Igawa told DW. According to Igawa, the unwillingness to modernize the more than 1,300-year-old sport could be fatal: “We say that sumo is our national sport. But the number of spectators is declining. Most of the visitors are old. It’s not a sport, appeals to young people. So what happens when the older fans all die away?” Sumo is a “small, conservative world” where veterans of the ring call the shots and there is a strict hierarchy: “They don’t like change. They don’t like outside critics. And they don’t like to see foreign wrestlers being the best are in a ‘Japanese sport’.”
Fred Varcoe agrees with this assessment. The British journalist has written about sumo for publications around the world. The sport is “stuck in its sense of traditionalism,” says Varcoe. “Those responsible are simply unable to adapt it to the present.” There are definitely ex-wrestlers in the Japanese Sumo Association JSA who want to modernize the sport. But they are in the minority and are being outmaneuvered by the deeply conservative members.
One of these reformers was Takanohana Koji. The 50-year-old had won 22 tournaments in his career – sixth in the “all-time” sumo rankings. In 2010 Takanohana became a member of the JSA board of directors, in 2018 he resigned in exasperation.
Scandals, lack of young people
The sporting problems have been joined by a number of scandals in recent years: from illegal gambling in fights to drug use among wrestlers and links to organized crime.
Most sumo wrestlers have to live in communal so-called “stables”, following strict traditional rules. In 2007, stable master Junichi Yamamoto was arrested for the death of 17-year-old Takashi Saito. It later emerged that Yamamoto hit the young wrestler in the head with a beer bottle. Saito had wanted to leave the “Stable” because he felt bullied.
In Japan, sumo is running out of young wrestlers
“The quality of the wrestlers fluctuates like any other sport,” says sumo expert Varcoe. “The bigger problem is Japan’s rapidly aging population. There aren’t enough children playing the sport. They would rather play with their cell phones than get up early and train for a physically demanding sport like sumo.”
In the past, the JSA has responded to the lack of Japanese sumo talent by bringing in more and more wrestlers from abroad. “That’s how Hawaiians and Mongolians made it to the top of the sport,” says Varcoe. However, many are skeptical about this solution because they want to keep sumo wrestling Japanese. “It’s both a tradition and a sport. But unless things change, there will be no growth. Maybe sumo won’t even survive.”
This article has been adapted from English.
