[sumo] [Long] Asashoryu Yaocho Article from Shukan Gendai - Part 2

[Lon Howard]

On Feb 4, 2007, at 6:32 AM, Joe Kuroda wrote:

> --- Kuramarujo <klemmerj at webtrek.com> wrote:
>
>> loud, but this article
>> really burns me up.  They did a great job of taking
>> little things and
>> twisting them around, keeping just enough truth so
>> that it seems like
>> they're breaking some serious story.
>
> I remember a criminal lawyer saying when he has a weak
> case, he provides a lot of facts that relate with the
> case but nothing directly to with the core evidience
> to somehow make jurors think that he is presenting a
> reasonable argument.

Just a couple of random thoughts...I don't KNOW anything, of course.

I was just thinking about this, in terms of the criminal cases you  
hear about sometimes, in which someone is convicted on purely  
circumstantial evidence.  You would think the bar for 'conviction'  
would be set much higher in cases where someone's life is at stake,  
but yet sometimes innocent people in these situations are wrongly  
convicted where the evidence is truly compelling...it all makes so  
much sense 'he' HAS to be guilty.  But later it's found he is not.

Another point about yaocho made some time ago on Sumo Form in a  
discussion about Itai's book, was that the situations and  
relationships used were so intricate and wove such a tangled web that  
they HAD to be true.  "Nobody can just make this stuff up!" went the  
presumption.  Well, folks like J.R.R. Tolkein and Sidney Sheldon, et  
al, make up stuff like that all the time.  Anybody who's seen a good  
spy movie knows you can make that stuff up.  Your spurned boy/girl  
friend makes that stuff up.  The idea that a fertile imagination  
couldn't have used a few nuggets of truth in Itai's book and taken it  
to fantasy-land is a lame argument for asserting his book was  
'largely' true.  I hope no one tries that line of thought here.

Just some random thoughts...

Lon Howard
Shomishuu