"Sumo hurt by its own mythmaking" - A fascinating look into the madness.

THE INSIDE GRIP: Sumo hurt by its own mythmaking : Sports : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE:

"...it's likely sumo will get back to doing what it has always done: bumbling along for the most part, occasionally wallowing in crises caused by its irreconcilable contradictions.

A professional sport that has public responsibilities, a profit-making organization with tax-free status, a secretive and Byzantine body that is completely at the mercy of the media, sumo suffers scandals more often than Japan changes prime ministers.



If sumo didn't pretend to some higher purpose, none of this would happen. Setting yourself up as a semi-ascetic, morally unimpeachable, quasi-religious cultural asset is always going to cause trouble when the reality is a lot more prosaic.

There is a tendency in all sports for fans to attach heroic qualities to the athletes. Sumo wrote the script, creating a warrior caste topped by yokozuna whose white rope apes the divine.

Of course, symbolism--imitative or not--creates an aura of power and mystique. And watching two wrestlers at the top of their game go mano a mano weaves a spell that is rare to find in this world.

But except for these sublime moments, sumo is a commercial venture. A profit-making, venal, bitchy sport populated by men who are in it for the money and who can make just as many mistakes as anyone else.

This most recent crisis shows just how bad those mistakes can be.

...But if we are looking beyond sumo's contradictions for a core reason why this took place, Kitanoumi may have provided an answer. Announcing his resignation on Monday, he said he had quit to take responsibility for Hakurozan's test failure.

In doing so, Kitanoumi relied on an ideological crutch he used to justify avoiding action in many of the other crises: the sanctity of the relationship between a stablemaster and his wrestler.

Asashoryu went astray because Takasago failed to supervise him; Roho beat up a photographer because Otake failed to supervise him; Wakanoho's career went up in smoke because Magaki was too sick to, yep, supervise him.

There are stables where the ideal seems close to being practiced--Kotooshu and Kotomitsuki's Sadogatake stable and Goeido's Sakaigawa come to mind. But if the JSA is going to rely on this master-wrestler relationship as the basis for its sport, then some serious house cleaning is in order."

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