Sumo and Sad Japanese?

Fears That the New State of Sumo Defiles Tradition

BISAI, Japan — In the moment before contact, the Bulgarian sumo wrestler faced the Japanese wrestler. No one spoke, in keeping with the solemn rituals of morning practice, and only the thump of another wrestler striking his bare palms against a wood pole could be heard. The smell of sweat, from more than a dozen nearly naked men, filled the room.

The two wrestlers in the ring hurled themselves against each other, producing a fierce noise, and as they locked in a violent embrace, the Bulgarian's face became suffused with blood. The moment they broke apart, his face returned to normal.

Complexion was perhaps the one thing the Bulgarian, Kaloyan Stefanov Mahalyanov, 20, could not control. Outside the ring, an irrepressible smile seems etched on his boyish face; inside, he has learned to bear an unsmiling countenance.

"Bend your knees!" his coach, Yoshikane Sadogatake, shouted at one point. "It's because you don't that you got injured last time."

"Yes, sir!" Mr. Mahalyanov said in Japanese.

Mr. Mahalyanov, whose sumo name is Kotooshu, or European Harp, is one of the rising number of non-Japanese wrestlers revolutionizing the most Japanese of sports.

Most significant, for the first time in the history of Japan, no Japanese ranks as a grand champion. Injuries forced the last Japanese holding that title to retire in January, leaving a Hawaiian and a Mongolian as the reigning grand champions of the 2,000-year-old sport. Grand champions occupy a special place in Japan, given sumo's close links to the traditional Shinto religion, embodying ideals of power, fighting spirit, grace and dignity.

"Sumo is only one small world, and it has been taken over by foreigners, and Japanese people feel sad," said Hidetoshi Tanaka, 56, general secretary of the International Sumo Federation and a trustee of Nihon University in Tokyo.

The sadness has deepened with the prediction that no Japanese will become a grand champion anytime soon and with the perception that the state of sumo reflects larger, uncontrollable currents in Japan. Since restrictions on foreign wrestlers were first relaxed in 1998, their numbers have swelled to 50 of the 386 ranked wrestlers. Most are Mongolians, but the list includes wrestlers from 10 other countries.

There is, for instance, Kokkai, or Black Sea, from Georgia, as well as Hoshitango from Argentina.

It was only in 1993 that Chad Rowan, an American known professionally as Akebono, was the first foreigner to become grand champion. Back then, the arguments against foreign wrestlers centered on whether they could ever have the dignity of Japanese wrestlers, in effect, whether they could become Japanese enough.

"We don't care anymore about foreigners being grand champions as long as they behave like traditional Japanese wrestlers, not as if they were in the W.W.F.," said Munehiko Harada, 49, a professor who specializes in sports marketing at Osaka University.

The new fear is that neither the foreign wrestlers nor the rising number of foreigners in Japanese society will behave the way most Japanese traditionally do. The Hawaiian-born grand champion known as Musashimaru is a model of probity. But concerns have been raised about the 22-year-old Mongolian-born wrestler who goes by the name Asashoryu, who earned the grand champion rank early this year.

In May, at the end of a bout in which judges ruled against him, Asashoryu glared at his opponent, an older Mongolian, and objected to the decision. He bumped the other wrestler's shoulder as he left the ring. The incident amounted to sacrilege in a sport where wrestlers scatter salt to purify the ring, and even the faintest smile after a victory is considered a violation of decorum.

Asashoryu was disqualified in a tournament in Nagoya for pulling an opponent's hair. In an even more egregious breach of etiquette, he was said to have not paid proper deference to an older wrestler by refusing to yield the way in a bathhouse corridor.

Threats were phoned in against Asashoryu. In a later match, fans threw seat cushions at him. Others unfurled a banner that read, "Go back to Mongolia."

Mr. Sadogatake, 62, the coach of the team to which the Bulgarian belongs, defended Asashoryu. "He hasn't trained his heart — that's why there are such problems," he said, predicting, however, that he would become a great champion: "His spirit is going forward."

Mr. Sadogatake, a former grand champion, blamed younger Japanese for the ascendancy of foreign wrestlers. He complained that the country had grown soft in its affluence, that few Japanese were willing to undergo the rigorous training of sumo, which allows little private life and in which younger members are expected to serve the older ones in sometimes demeaning ways.

"The Japanese have forgotten how to work hard," he said. "You have to sacrifice yourself for your parents, other people and for yourself."

On a recent morning, in the Buddhist temple where wrestlers were training for the tournament, two foreign wrestlers, Mr. Mahalyanov, the Bulgarian, and a Mongolian, outshone the Japanese at practice.

Mr. Sadogatake rained his sharpest words on a Japanese wrestler: "Aren't you ashamed — losing like this? You're not getting any better. You idiot! You woke up so late this morning. You want to take it easier than everybody else."

His daughter, Machiko Kamatani, 31, hovered between the ring and the kitchen, where lunch was being prepared. Growing up in the sumo world, she had disliked its insularity, she said; to flee from it, she had even gone to college in the United States.

But eventually she married her father's top wrestler, Mitsuya Kamatani, 35, who is known as Kotonowaka.

The couple expect to take over Mr. Sadogatake's stable after he retires in a couple of years. They are aware that because of sumo's declining popularity, the stable has lost both wrestlers and backers. Foreign wrestlers offer one hope.

The Bulgarian said he became interested in sumo after seeing an amateur troop in Europe two years ago. Once he got to Japan, his habits, which included sending money home to his parents, impressed Mr. Sadogatake. Mr. Mahalyanov, who is not ranked very high and who makes only about $425 a month, said he had wired home $3,400 in prize money.

After the morning training session was over, he and the other junior members of the stable served lunch to their elders. The younger wrestlers ate when the others were done.

There was little time left before Mr. Mahalyanov's 1:45 p.m. bout in Nagoya, 13 miles away.

But at the appointed time, Kotooshu — who is 6 feet 6 inches and weighs 287 pounds — entered the ring to face his opponent.

"Kotooshu!" someone in the crowd shouted.

The wrestlers locked bodies. Within seconds, Kotooshu pushed his Japanese opponent out of the ring and triumphed.

Then he returned to his side of the ring and bowed solemnly before the judge. He remembered not to smile.

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Originally posted by Mandylion
"Sumo is only one small world, and it has been taken over by foreigners, and Japanese people feel sad,"

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