And in a country where being rotund is no longer a sign of prosperity but a marker of overindulgence, all that fat is considered unsightly, even if it is wrapped around a lithe and limber fighting machine. The training is too rigorous, the bottoms too bared. What average Japanese kid today wants to grow up-and out-to become a sumo wrestler? Ask any high school or middle school sumo coach what’s happened to recruitment numbers, and he’ll tell you they’ve gone way down. The number of Japanese sumo recruits dwindles each year. The reason for the foreign invasion is simple. Well beyond the Mongolians, in just over a decade, foreigners have so dominated sumo that more than half of all high-ranked wrestlers are now gaijin, the colloquial term for “foreigners.” At the 2010 autumn tournament in Tokyo, only one Japanese man competed in the top two echelons, and he was a 37-year-old journeyman past his prime. Both are from the land of Genghis Khan: Asashoryu (né Dolgorsuren Dagvadorj) and Hakuho (formerly known as Monkhbatyn Davaajargal). Since 2003, only two men have been promoted to the exalted status of yokozuna, or grand champion, the sport’s highest rank to which a mere 69 wrestlers have clambered since 1789. And everywhere, it seems, are the wide cheekbones of Mongolian athletes. There is the telltale cellulite of a trio of Georgian wrestlers, whose bodies accumulate fat quite differently from the way the Japanese physique does. For here is the blond topknot of an Estonian ex-bouncer called Baruto (real name: Kaido Höövelson) and the hairy chest of Bulgaria’s Kotooshu (born Kaloyan Stefanov Mahlyanov). Clad only in loincloths, their hair swept into topknots that were the peak of fashion 150 years ago, the men of sumo are supposed to serve as oversized poster boys for the ultimate Japanese virtues: dignity, honor, discipline, and strength.īut the guardians of this most Japanese of sports can no longer claim this responsibility as their birthright. For 1,500 years, religious-inspired ritual has guided every lumbering step taken by sumo wrestlers. No wonder, then, that sumo, more than any other athletic endeavor, is thought to embody the soul of the Japanese nation.
As an exhibit at the sport’s museum in Tokyo explains: “According to Japanese legend, the very origin of the Japanese race depended on the outcome of a sumo match.” The supremacy of the Japanese people on the islands of Japan was established, as the legend goes, when the god Takemikazuchi won a sumo bout against the chief of a rival tribe. In the beginning, before there was a nation called Japan, there was sumo.
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