[sumo] A Tokitsuskaze article with a little insight

[Sumocypher at aol.com]

Since I cant add anything clever to the list, here, from the Washington  
Post, finally an intelligent article on the pervasive bully culture of Japan,  
WITHOUT citing Asashoryu to balance the hazing with a non-event on   Asashoryu's 
part.  , as the Japanese newspapers ALWAYS DO.
 
I couldn't get back to the Post website again without registering, so here  
is the text. 
 
0
 
Brutal Beating Death Brings Sumo's Dark Side to  Light
Teen Trainee Sought to Quit Japan's National Sport
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday,  March 10, 2008; A01
TOKYO -- Baseball bats have become standard equipment in sumo training. Young 
 wrestlers, though, don't swing the bats. They are beaten with them. 
This sadistic bit of sumo lore became common knowledge across _Japan_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/japan.html?nav=el)  last year 
after a beating with a metal baseball bat,  together with repeated blows from a 
beer bottle and multiple cigarette burns,  caused the death of a 17-year-old 
junior wrestler named _Takashi Saito_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Takashi+Saito?tid=informline) . 
His death, which police initially ruled to be the result of "heart disease,"  
led to the arrest last month of his former sumo stable master, who has since  
told police he beat Saito because the boy had a "vague attitude" about his  
career in sumo. 
Three wrestlers have also been arrested in connection with the beating. But  
it took until Thursday -- more than eight months after Saito's death and a 
month  after the wrestlers were indicted -- for the powerful Japan Sumo 
Association to  take action against them. The JSA decided that it would ban the three 
from  competing in sumo tournaments and said that, if they were found guilty, 
it would  expel them from the profession. 
The death, the arrests and the measured response of the JSA have cast a cold  
light on the closed world of sumo, laying bare the bullying, brutality and  
hierarchical torment that are routine in the self-governed sport, which is 
2,000  years old and has been a profitable professional endeavor for nearly four  
centuries. 
"That this happened in sumo, the national sport and symbol of Japan, is a  
serious matter," Prime Minister _Yasuo Fukuda_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Yasuo+Fukuda?tid=informline)  said last month. 
Bullying and top-down hazing, however, are hardly unique to the sumo stables  
where wrestlers live and train. That may be why the death of the young 
wrestler  has resonated with the Japanese. 
"This happens all across the country, in schools and workplaces, and it is  
probably one of the cultural characteristics we have in Japan," said Naoki Ogi, 
 a professor of education at Hosei University in _Tokyo_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Tokyo?tid=informline)  and longtime critic of the 
culture of discipline in Japanese  schools. 
The abuse that occurs in sumo stables, Ogi said, is a contemporary echo of  
the beatings that were routine inside the Japanese military in the years before 
 World War II, when the armed forces had pervasive influence on Japanese 
society.  This abusive pattern, he said, persists in business and education, 
albeit in  ways that are far more psychological than physical. 
"As a society, Japan has yet to go through a full democratic review of this  
kind of behavior," he said. 
Police initially appeared reluctant to conduct a full review in the case of  
Saito, who died in _Aichi prefecture_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Aichi+Prefecture?tid=informline)  last June, his body covered with 
bruises, cuts  and burns. Without conducting an autopsy, they ruled that heart 
disease was the  cause of death -- a judgment quickly accepted by the JSA. 
"There was negligence on the part of the police," said Nobuyoshi Tsujiguchi,  
a lawyer who represents Japanese professional athletes. He said the police  
seemed to lean over backwards to protect the reputation of sumo. 
After Saito's death was attributed to natural causes, his stable master,  
Junichi Yamamoto, encouraged the boy's family to allow him to cremate the body,  
according to news accounts. 
The father, though, insisted on seeing the teenager's body. After he saw  
bruises and other wounds, he asked doctors at Niigata University to perform an  
autopsy. They found that shock from a beating had caused the youth's heart to  
stop. 
Police were then pressured by his family and the news media to open an  
investigation, which found that Saito had infuriated his master by trying to  quit 
his stable. 
In Japan, all sumo wrestlers belong to a stable, a gym/dormitory where most  
of them live and where all of them train under the supervision of a master,  
himself a former wrestler. These masters, who are the collective owners of the  
JSA, receive payments from the national association for each wrestler in 
their  stable. 
"There is pressure on the masters to keep the trainees because they are a  
source of income," said Tsujiguchi, the sports lawyer. 
Inside the stable where he was the unquestioned boss, Yamamoto shouted at  
Saito for attempting to escape, according to police. "As he had this vague  
attitude about whether he would continue in sumo, I flew into a rage and beat  
him," Yamamoto told police, according to the Yomiuri newspaper. 
Police have charged that Yamamoto hit the youth 10 times with a beer bottle  
and then ordered three wrestlers to beat him. Saito's body also showed signs 
of  having been hit with a metal baseball bat. 
Yamamoto was expelled from the JSA in October for "severely damaging public  
trust." 
The three wrestlers have denied any intent to kill Saito. They have said,  
through a lawyer, that they were under the control of Yamamoto and that they  
dared not "talk back" to him. 
After the beating became public, the JSA sent a survey to the 53 stables in  
Japan, asking about their training practices. More than 90 percent have used  
baseball bats or similar implements in training, the survey found. About a 
third  of the stables said bullying and other forms of abuse occurred during  
training. 
Sumo has become a troubled sport -- in ways that have nothing to do with  
violence in the training stables. 
There have been news reports of match fixing. A concern of much longer  
standing is the number of foreign-born champions -- the best of whom are now  from 
_Mongolia_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Mongolia?tid=informline) . This has hurt the sport's popularity among some  traditionalists. 
Since Saito's death, disclosures about the workaday brutality inside sumo  
stables seem to have shocked many Japanese, especially those who do not follow  
the sport closely. 
"I am sure parents will not want their sons to go into such a scary place,"  
said Tsujiguchi, the sports lawyer. "This is going to decrease participation 
by  the Japanese, make more room for foreign participants and hurt the sport's  
popularity even more." 
Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this  report.
 
 
 
 
 



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