dada78641

It depends on whether I'm capable of waking up early enough to catch it live. In my timezone it should be around 9:00 AM (16:00 in Japan, not sure when coverage starts). But I think I won't make that because I'm incredibly lazy, so I'll just turn on my stream and watch it whenever I do wake up.

Absolutely. I really hope he doesn't turn out to be one of those rikishi who are promising but consistently have injury problems. He rose through the ranks very rapidly, he's clever, strong and has good ring sense, so if he can just stay healthy...

It's never going to work of course, but they know that. These things are designed to put the pressure on for change. And they make a good point in that sumo receives a lot of federal funding, which puts the government in an awkward position. It's always a major 迷惑 to the sumo world when politicians start having debates about them.

I'll be honest, I didn't know he was still in sumo. It's been so long since I've seen him in the coverage. I guess he reached his limit. What's impressive about him is that he had a massive injury break, took 5 consecutive basho off and dropped from J3 to jonidan, and then worked his way up to reach his all time high rank of M5.

This is something I've noticed as well. I think everybody would appreciate it if @Chankomafuji would just explain himself clearly instead of using vague language and relying on innuendo to get a point across. I and several others have gotten confused, and when I said "let me know if I'm wrong about my interpretation of your post," he said I got it wrong, but didn't explain why, and then said something about how I'm "politically correct"? Let's just stop with the dog whistles and get back to speaking like adults.

With respect, but what are you even saying? I've read your post a few times and it's difficult for me to even piece together a coherent argument. So you're saying that in "modern places" with "2018 values" (your quotes, presumably you are talking about the West and not Japan?) girls grow up without a sense of family and are somehow encouraged to take up low end jobs like working at McDonalds? And you applaud Japan because things are different over there? I don't get it. I'm guessing you're against women joining the workforce in equal measure as men, and that they should—at least to a greater degree than men—dedicate themselves to the task of running a family. Let me know if I'm wrong about any of these assumptions, because it's genuinely hard for me to understand your post. But to be frank, it seems to me that your whole opinion on this is based on a misunderstanding of how the world works. It's good that women are entering the workforce, and this doesn't just mean girls end up doing low end work like flipping burgers. It means they get real career opportunities in hopefully equal measure as boys. And just the same, little girls should not be seen as somehow being more fragile than little boys, and therefore unfit to take part in contact sports. Because they're not. There's boxing for girls, wrestling for girls, karate for girls, capoeira for girls...and so on. All those sports have been doing fine for ages.

Aside from the fact that this is incredibly hamfisted given the current debate, I simply don't believe there's any real evidence of this. To my knowledge, no child has ever been seriously injured (beyond a simple scrape from falling off the dohyo or whatnot) during these events. In part because wrestlers who go up against children do their best to be careful with them, and any injury they cause would be a grave problem. If something goes wrong, it's on the news—and incidental. If I'm wrong and there is some credibility to this claim, please let me know because I couldn't find anything. I think these people are incredibly careless and basically make these decisions arbitrarily and then use their PR department to relay supposition as fact. Maybe they can get away with this any other time, but doing it in the middle of a controversy is just 火に油を注ぐ

Thank you for such a great and thorough article. Agree with you from start to finish. This recent scandal was painful to watch, but hopefully it can serve as a catalyst for some change. I also appreciate your paragraphs about how meaningless the distinction really is, and how this leaves out transgender people. I've been following that aspect of the discussion since reading about transgender wrestler Mack Beggs. Your article was not shy to put it all out there and take a bold stance. Thank you!

The "no women" rule is bullshit. You know it, I know it, anyone who's a sumo fan know it. We just don't talk about it because nobody expects it to change. Besides, you can talk about how the people who are outraged by this "aren't real sumo fans", but does that mean they are automatically wrong? They're not. Doesn't matter if you're a sumo fan or not. All you need is half a brain. I'm glad it's giving people an opportunity to put pressure on the NSK, because they were obviously never going to do anything about this otherwise.

Still, despite being rooted deeply in rituals and sticking to the historical ways of doing things, sumo is none the less a sport that naturally adapts with new technology. They obviously use TV cameras, they use TV evidence in the monoii, they communicate electronically to call the kimarete. They didn't have any of those things in the past. When you start listing the differences between then and now, there's probably a hundred more. People have cartoons on their kesho-mawashi. So I don't buy the "this is how it's always been" argument that sumo people keep relying on. Sumo won't fall apart with a few more sensible 21st century changes.

I don't believe their explanations, really. They just seem too farfetched. It's 3:29 AM here (why do I keep doing this to myself...) so I'm not gonna go search Twitter to see what "the people" think, but I'd be surprised if the average person is too happy about this. I wonder, if Japan ever were to get a female prime minister, if she would be permitted to give out the Emperor's Cup after some astounding zensho yuusho. If that hypothetical were to come true, I'd love to hear the kyokai's excuse for why a lowly prime minister is not worthy to mount the dohyo.

I don't understand it either. I'll continue to support Kisenosato. No matter how you look at it, he got unlucky. Compare his win/loss record before and after his injury—it's day and night. And the consensus seems to be that his injury is never going to heal. For a long time, he was the best ozeki who would've made it to yokozuna a lot sooner in any other era of the sport. He would've been a great yokozuna, and it's a dreadful shame that his career is getting cut short so ruthlessly. But I don't think that it's right to call him a paper tiger because of that. He deserves better.

Their response to scandal seems to be to do even more shady micro management behind the scenes. Reminds me of this quote from you know what movie: "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

It's four in the morning, the end of Decem... I mean, time for the Takanohana scandal road show.

You know, I was wondering what happened to him. That's absolutely dreadful.