[sumo] A Tokitsuskaze article with a little insight

[artist at aloha.net]

Really well done article. But this is an iceberg floating deep and just out
of reach. 


Lynn Matsuoka
"The Degas of Sumo and Kabuki"
www.traditions.jp
You can commission a painting of your favorite rikishi!






On 3/10/08 11:36 AM, "Sumocypher at aol.com" <Sumocypher at aol.com> wrote:

> 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=informli
> ne)  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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