[sumo] Asashoryu and Soccer

[Joe Petrow]

On 8/2/07, Kuramarujo <klemmerj at webtrek.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 16:41 +0900, Joe Petrow wrote:
>
> > Asashoryu broke two of the biggest taboos in not sumo, but in Japanese
> > society.   You don't disrespect your patrons...but if you do,
> > you certainly don't do it in public.
>
>         It seems to me it's closer to disrespecting the financial gain of those
> in power.  What he did was not right.  It was, as you said, incredibly
> stupid.  But tell me, have there been other cases where similar
> punishment was imposed?  If so, what were the circumstances?

Well, I believe that the case of former yokozuna Maedayama.  He
dropped out of a tournament claiming illness, but was later found at a
Japanese baseball game.  He was forced to retire.

Then of course, there was former yokozuna Futahaguro.  That wasn't
even done in public, yet he was forced to resign because he
disrespected his oyakata's wife.

Because those punishments were framed as "retirements", the media
claims that this is the first time a yokozuna has been "punished", but
in fact it's only the first time where a public yokozuna punishment
hasn't resulted in being completely forced out of sumo.  That lesser
offences than Asashoryu's resulted in banishment shows me that the
Kyokai actually did take the fact that Asashoryu was asked to do these
things for charity by the Mongolian government into account and showed
mercy.

There are probably many other cases where rikishi who shamed sumo
ended up retiring.  It's only fairly recently that the Kyokai started
handing out public "punishments" when a rikishi's discipline could not
be handled behind closed doors (the first one I can recall was Toki's
involuntary vehicular manslaughter), because until fairly recently
most rikishi already knew when the only honorable option remaining was
to retire.

  - Peterao