[sumo] Any More Surprises? Sumo, Violence and Secrets

[Takanomizu]

>>  Like, did you know that they throw 
> salt on the the dohyo because all the junior wrestlers are expected 
> to eat it after the basho is finished? ;-)

Of course, it's what keeps their hair black!

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carl Freire" <cfreire at ix.netcom.com>
To: "Sumo Mailing List" <sumo at webtrek.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2007 8:36 PM
Subject: Re: [sumo] Any More Surprises? Sumo, Violence and Secrets


> At 7:51 PM -0700 10/4/07, Takanomizu wrote:
>>Let me throw this out:
>>I admit I'm a little naive. But even with following sumo for @ 15 
>>years and living in Japan for four, I never knew about the hazing. 
>>The deshi-on-deshi violence surprises me. Is hazing something male?
> 
> Well, girls are plenty bad to each other in in-groups, are they not? 
> I suspect the gender difference lies more in the degree to which it 
> becomes physical.
> 
>>  The only other situation I associate it with is fraternities. Is it 
>>a secret society thing?
> 
> See the above.  (As a related aside to the gender matter, are we to 
> assume sorority women are always nice to each other?)
> 
> I don't think it's a "secret society" thing so much as an "in-group" 
> thing in those groups where hierarchy and proving yourself to your 
> seniors matters most.
> 
>>I always thought that, along with tradition, money was the reason 
>>most people act the way they do in the Sumo world, but I never 
>>thought that matches were fixed. Is it possible?
> 
> Plenty of writing on fixing in all sports.  I can't recall offhand if 
> any "yaocho" scandals have actually been *proven*, but there's plenty 
> of circumstantial evidence and even a couple of suspicious deaths 
> along the trail.
> 
> <http://www.iht.com/articles/2000/02/03/wrestle.2.t.php>
> 
> For that matter, without digging into the academic discourse, plenty 
> of "traditions" in and out of sumo tend to be more recent inventions.
> 
>>Any more surprises for the naive old broad?
> 
> Well, the more you learn about anything, the more there may be to 
> surprise you, until you reach that tipping point where "ah ha!" 
> becomes just "ah, uh huh" :-)  Like, did you know that they throw 
> salt on the the dohyo because all the junior wrestlers are expected 
> to eat it after the basho is finished? ;-)
> 
> Cheers,
> Carl
> -- 
> 
> **********
> 
> Carl Freire
> cfreire-[AT)-ix.netcom.com
> Tokyo, Japan
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