The Strange World of being a Sumo Wrestler
Everybody must have seen a Sumo Wrestling match before, but what most people don’t realise is that Sumo wrestlers live unbelievably harsh and regimented lives. Everyone who sees a Sumo match sees a bunch of overweight men pushing each other out of a ring and from what they have heard it’s a pretty good life that these guys live. They have fan clubs and enjoy celebrity status in Japan but there is a lot going on behind the scenes of a Sumo wrestler’s life that people usually don’t get to hear about.
Apparently Sumo wrestlers lead extremely tough lives because of ancient Japanese traditions regulating the sport. Japan although a developed country is still steeped in ancient traditions. Strong ancient class systems are very much apparent in the sport of Sumo. “Life as a rikishi (Sumo wrestler) is highly regimented, with rules laid down by the Sumo Association. Most sumo wrestlers are required to live in communal "sumo training stables" where all aspects of their daily lives—from meals to their manner of dress—are dictated by strict tradition,” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Sumo_wrestling).
What I find very worrying about this statement is the word used for the communal area where the Sumo wrestlers live; the area is called a stable. Now I don’t know if this makes anyone else a bit uncomfortable but I wouldn’t be too happy living somewhere called a stable. It gives the impression that the wrestlers are like prized bulls that are taken out of the stable, made to wrestle each other and then put back in the stable. Why would they call their living area a stable? It just sounds very odd to call the living quarters that but whatever floats their boat as they say.
The other odd aspect of Sumo life is the highly structured hierarchy that is maintained in the sport. Each Sumo wrestler starts out life in a very junior position doing very menial tasks for older and more established wrestlers; jobs such as drawing their baths, cleaning their clothes and cooking their meals. As the wrestler moves up in his career, he starts to get more privileges and finds he has junior wrestlers doing menial tasks for him now. This strict hierarchical structure has made a lot of people criticise the way the sport is run and governed. A lot of people feel that it is obstructing basic human rights and is very discriminatory in nature. Others feel that because it has been going on for so long these sorts of practices should be retained to honour its traditions. It is up to the reader to make up their own minds here as to whether it is exploitative or should it maintain traditions. A lot of movements have been tried that would bring the sport into the 21st century but all have failed.
A Sumo wrestler can only be a man and in today’s world there is actually a sport that women cannot participate in and that too in a developed country. “Women are not allowed to enter or touch the sumo wrestling ring (dohyō), as this is traditionally seen to be a violation of the purity of the dohyō,” (http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Sumo_wrestling). Women are not even allowed to enter the ring because they might make it dirty. These kinds of medieval thoughts are still surviving in a very popular sport all around the world.
It takes one back to the days of being a schoolchild when boys thought girls were yeech and girls thought boys were ikky. We all grow out of it but apparently it is still flourishing in some parts of the world. Maybe with new regulations and better inclusive policies women will be allowed to compete in Japan and these kinds of archaic rules and ways of thinking will be banished to the history books. Whatever we may feel about the sport and how badly new recruits are treated, it is still very popular and even though the health of wrestlers gets very badly affected during their careers, people (this should say men) in Japan still queue up to join.
So maybe we are missing the point but it doesn’t seem to be getting any less popular. Maybe the fact that Sumo wrestlers get paid a whole lot of money each month helps to sway people’s choice.
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