Yoshikaze situation

[Seiyashi 3,908]

31 minutes ago, RabidJohn said:

12 hours ago, Tigerboy1966 said:

There are two sides to every story, especially in domestic disputes...

I see I'm not the only one who found this case's original description as being "domestic violence" very misleading...

This was a child-abuse case, and no doubt the mother got to give her "side of the story" in court - where she was found guilty.

To play devil's advocate a little, and to perhaps hearken back to Tigerboy1966's original intent:

The caution here is that we already seem to have cast the wife in the role of the villain and to believe that Yoshikaze is in the absolute right in this whole affair. That may well be the case. But do remember that

1. we are a sumo forum that tends to support rikishi;
2. we all seem to be subscribers to a relatively liberal philosophy of childraising, which frowns on any kind of corporal punishment and condemns in relatively strong terms any acts that can be construed as abuse, much less acts that would be outright assault. I don't intend to get into debate over what is or is not appropriate childraising; this is just to point out as a fact that there is a spectrum of what various cultures would consider acceptable or non-acceptable acts of punishment on a child and one's moral antenna would be more or less strongly tuned against some acts depending on your cultural background. Don't forget that the term "abuse" is, even if factually accurate in the circumstances, a very loaded term that casts immediate aspersions on any alleged perpetrator;
3. we are "passing judgment" in absentia and without the benefit of firsthand information in English. All our sources are at best second or thirdhand, and there already seem to have been nuances lost in translation such as "domestic violence vs child abuse".

To be absolutely clear, I don't for a moment intend to insinuate or impute that Yoshikaze himself is guilty of any wrongdoing especially in the total absence of any evidence. The fact that his daughter trusted him enough to go to him for assistance when her mother did that to her is, I think, sufficient proof of the contrary. Nor do I condone the spraying of chemicals into a child's eyes; that has done a Hakuho run down the hanamichi and back to the shitakubeya, never mind the fact that the child in question is old enough to be reasoned with. If it had been an adult that would have been assault or the equivalent crime in any jurisdiction, and in my view it triply compounds the offence that the victim is a minor and in a position of trust to the offender.

But the point I am trying to raise is, even if the wife has been found guilty in court for this specific instance of child abuse, we are in a very bad position to judge the wife because of our own biases and lack of information. To delve further into the cultural point, I come from a culture where spanking toddlers is considered acceptable discipline and, just half a generation ago, the cane/rattan was considered perfectly acceptable for major disciplinary infractions like lying or similar. In fact, the present reaction to noisy/other socially unacceptable behaviour by children in public is: "not enough discipline at home, one tight slap would have solved the problem earlier". I'm not saying that I believe that any of this is right, but in a not-so-hypothetical culture where this was relatively normal until not very long ago, the problem to the court would have been the insecticide only and not necessarily the rest of the physical abuse, hence the relatively lighter sentence than what we may think she deserves.

Also, we don't know what has gone on behind closed doors between Yoshikaze and his wife. I'm not saying that anything justifies child abuse, but a very bad relationship between Yoshikaze and his wife could have led to his wife abusing the kids to get back at him, possibly, and you could, for the sake of argument, say that Yoshikaze could have done more earlier. It's easy to say frilly woman, abuses kids, clearly a rotten egg next to Saint Yoshikaze, but this is already what we are inclined to believe given the history of the thread.

At the risk of sounding sanctimonious, perhaps we should dial back a little on the prejudging of the wife - this I read as the main import of Tigerboy1966's post and no more.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Seiyashi

[Kintamayama 42,735]

14 minutes ago, Seiyashi said:

To play devil's advocate a little, and to perhaps hearken back to Tigerboy1966's original intent:

The caution here is that we already seem to have cast the wife in the role of the villain and to believe that Yoshikaze is in the absolute right in this whole affair. That may well be the case. But do remember that

1. we are a sumo forum that tends to support rikishi;
2. we all seem to be subscribers to a relatively liberal philosophy of childraising, which frowns on any kind of corporal punishment and condemns in relatively strong terms any acts that can be construed as abuse, much less acts that would be outright assault. I don't intend to get into debate over what is or is not appropriate childraising; this is just to point out as a fact that there is a spectrum of what various cultures would consider acceptable or non-acceptable acts of punishment on a child and one's moral antenna would be more or less strongly tuned against some acts depending on your cultural background. Don't forget that the term "abuse" is, even if factually accurate in the circumstances, a very loaded term that casts immediate aspersions on any alleged perpetrator;
3. we are "passing judgment" in absentia and without the benefit of firsthand information in English. All our sources are at best second or thirdhand, and there already seem to have been nuances lost in translation such as "domestic violence vs child abuse".

To be absolutely clear, I don't for a moment intend to insinuate or impute that Yoshikaze himself is guilty of any wrongdoing especially in the total absence of any evidence. The fact that his daughter trusted him enough to go to him for assistance when her mother did that to her is, I think, sufficient proof of the contrary. Nor do I condone the spraying of chemicals into a child's eyes; that has done a Hakuho run down the hanamichi and back to the shitakubeya, never mind the fact that the child in question is old enough to be reasoned with. If it had been an adult that would have been assault or the equivalent crime in any jurisdiction, and in my view it triply compounds the offence that the victim is a minor and in a position of trust to the offender.

But the point I am trying to raise is, even if the wife has been found guilty in court for this specific instance of child abuse, we are in a very bad position to judge the wife because of our own biases and lack of information. To delve further into the cultural point, I come from a culture where spanking toddlers is considered acceptable discipline and, just half a generation ago, the cane/rattan was considered perfectly acceptable for major disciplinary infractions like lying or similar. In fact, the present reaction to noisy/other socially unacceptable behaviour by children in public is: "not enough discipline at home, one tight slap would have solved the problem earlier". I'm not saying that I believe that any of this is right, but in a not-so-hypothetical culture where this was relatively normal until not very long ago, the problem to the court would have been the insecticide only and not necessarily the rest of the physical abuse, hence the relatively lighter sentence than what we may think she deserves.

Also, we don't know what has gone on behind closed doors between Yoshikaze and his wife. I'm not saying that anything justifies child abuse, but a very bad relationship between Yoshikaze and his wife could have led to his wife abusing the kids to get back at him, possibly, and you could, for the sake of argument, say that Yoshikaze could have done more earlier. It's easy to say frilly woman, abuses kids, clearly a rotten egg next to Saint Yoshikaze, but this is already what we are inclined to believe given the history of the thread.

At the risk of sounding sanctimonious, perhaps we should dial back a little on the prejudging of the wife - this I read as the main import of Tigerboy1966's post and no more.

For the record, devils advocate or not, I totally disagree with every word you wrote. I am referring solely to the abuse, and not to their wife-husband relationship which is a totally different thing. Nothing, nothing justifies abusing a child. You are "not saying anything justifies child abuse" but then a a few words later you are saying exactly that with an excuse that "may" justify that. And if it's  to "get back at Yoshikaze", well, really.. It has nothing to do with cultural background differences. Are you comparing spanking or slapping to this? This is far beyond that and we are indeed in the position to judge the wife - regarding this , of course, since it has been proven in a court of law and a sentence was issued. It has absolutely nothing to do with any bias towards the wife re her relationship with Yoshikaze. It has to do with a a woman who abuses her child, even if she were Florence Nightingale reincarnated and the pinnacle of Tokyo society. Dial back on the prejudging? Not in the abuse case. If anything, she got off nearly scot-free.

[Seiyashi 3,908]

1 hour ago, Kintamayama said:

For the record, devils advocate or not, I totally disagree with every word you wrote. I am referring solely to the abuse, and not to their wife-husband relationship which is a totally different thing. Nothing, nothing justifies abusing a child. You are "not saying anything justifies child abuse" but then a a few words later you are saying exactly that with an excuse that "may" justify that. And if it's  to "get back at Yoshikaze", well, really.. It has nothing to do with cultural background differences. Are you comparing spanking or slapping to this? This is far beyond that and we are indeed in the position to judge the wife - regarding this , of course, since it has been proven in a court of law and a sentence was issued. It has absolutely nothing to do with any bias towards the wife re her relationship with Yoshikaze. It has to do with a a woman who abuses her child, even if she were Florence Nightingale reincarnated and the pinnacle of Tokyo society. Dial back on the prejudging? Not in the abuse case. If anything, she got off nearly scot-free.

As far as the specific instance of abuse is concerned, I do agree with you. I wrote this: 

1 hour ago, Seiyashi said:

Nor do I condone the spraying of chemicals into a child's eyes; that has done a Hakuho run down the hanamichi and back to the shitakubeya, never mind the fact that the child in question is old enough to be reasoned with. If it had been an adult that would have been assault or the equivalent crime in any jurisdiction, and in my view it triply compounds the offence that the victim is a minor and in a position of trust to the offender.

There's no dressing the spraying of chemicals up as anything else. In that she is clearly in the wrong and she has been judged and deemed guilty by a competent court of law according to the laws of the land. Whether or not the penalty is sufficient is a different matter, but she has been penalised and the law has run its course in this matter (though not yet in the overall context of the divorce). As far as the specific incident of chemicals are concerned I don't think we disagree at all that she is clearly in the wrong. 

Where I am saying there is wiggle room for everything else. Abuse in general is to be condemned - sure. But abuse isn't a binary yes/no. There is still a grey area, perhaps increasingly small nowadays, where people might reasonably disagree if something was abuse or not. When a newspaper reports the rest of what she did (i.e. sans chemicals) as abuse, someone has made an editorial judgment to call what they saw the wife doing as abuse. Maybe it was well over the line and maybe it wasn't. I'm not saying that it was or wasn't either way, but I am asking people to bear in mind that there is this intermediation of interpretation by the informative sources that we have that, by its very nature, causes a loss of nuance which may or may not affect our judgment had we been the one to interpret it ourselves. That is all I am saying, which goes back to the original intent of the post that I tried to defend.

By extension, therefore, while there's no defending the wife as regards the chemicals, we ought to bear in mind that for everything else, we are getting our information second or third hand and therefore the information we get has already been through someone else's value filter. Before the chemicals incident broke, we were already lampooning the wife about the dollhouse and her chosen lifestyle (not befitting an athlete's wife, apparently); the latest incident of abuse has just confirmed our "judgment"/"assessment" that the wife is definitely "off". If it had been the other way round, if the wife had been a relatively upstanding and virtuous okamisan, how would we have judged her instead?

P.S. If the tenor of my two posts are too "off" for the forum I accept if they are to be removed. I do not condone child abuse at all. However, I feel it is a worthwhile point - although this may be quite reasonably disagreed with - to raise the possibility that this incident of child abuse by the wife is just solidifying our preconceptions of her as a wrong'un which she may or may not deserve in totality once this entire matter has run its course. But for the absolute avoidance of doubt once again, I do not condone child abuse, but neither will I accept a simplistic reduction of my position to say that I defend child abuse under some circumstances - my point goes towards how we are judging the wife in toto on the basis of the evidence we have.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Seiyashi

[Tigerboy1966 1,217]

9 hours ago, Kintamayama said:

If anything, she got off nearly scot-free.

Probably because what she actually did wasn't as bad as it has been presented on this forum. And if you have a dysfunctional family it's not easy or wise to separate one aspect and view it out of context. People f*ck things up and hurt the ones they love. That's life, unfortunately.

[Kintamayama 42,735]

44 minutes ago, Tigerboy1966 said:

Probably because what she actually did wasn't as bad as it has been presented on this forum. And if you have a dysfunctional family it's not easy or wise to separate one aspect and view it out of context. People f*ck things up and hurt the ones they love. That's life, unfortunately.

No it isn’t.  That's not life. And what makes you think what she did was probably not as bad as presented on this forum? Have you read another version elsewhere? I'd be happy to see a link to a different version of what happened.

[Tigerboy1966 1,217]

25 minutes ago, Kintamayama said:

I'd be happy to see a link to a different version of what happened.

So would I.

[Seiyashi 3,908]

On 03/04/2021 at 00:23, Akinomaki said:

The wife today got a fine of 300 000Yen from the Tokyo summary court http://www.sanspo.com/geino/news/20210402/tro21040218410001-n1.html

Quick question: are reports of court findings from reputable mainstream news outlets usually this terse? Other sources I can find are equally sparse on details.

[Akinomaki 37,406]

8 hours ago, Seiyashi said:

Quick question: are reports of court findings from reputable mainstream news outlets usually this terse? Other sources I can find are equally sparse on details.

The details of the accusations were posted in earlier articles, the proper papers then just mention them and the court decision. For other cases they'd also report the reason why the there was no indictment, thus no full court trial and just a summary order by the summary court. That there are none given may indicate that the public would not expect an indictment in this type of case.  For "background" and other speculations on this you have to look in the tabloids.

[Seiyashi 3,908]

2 minutes ago, Akinomaki said:

8 hours ago, Seiyashi said:

Quick question: are reports of court findings from reputable mainstream news outlets usually this terse? Other sources I can find are equally sparse on details.

The details of the accusations were posted in earlier articles, the proper papers then just mention them and the court decision. For other cases they'd also report the reason why the there was no indictment, thus no full court trial and just a summary order by the summary court. That there are none given may indicate that the public would not expect an indictment in this type of case.  For "background" and other speculations on this you have to look in the tabloids.

So the report of the court decision itself is at best non-indicative as to the truth of those allegations? I was originally thinking that it was odd that the formal report of the indictment and fine mentioned only abuse and didn't mention the acts that constituted the abuse.

[Akinomaki 37,406]

On 05/04/2021 at 08:46, Seiyashi said:

So the report of the court decision itself is at best non-indicative as to the truth of those allegations? I was originally thinking that it was odd that the formal report of the indictment and fine mentioned only abuse and didn't mention the acts that constituted the abuse.

That she was found guilty of the accusations and had no full trial indicates that she fully admitted, but that the acts she committed are not criminal enough to have the state attorney issue a formal indictment (kiso), which would have resulted in a full criminal trial. She got a shortened indictment, which leads to an immediate sentence.

Edited April 6, 2021 by Akinomaki

[Churaumi 707]

So...will she have a criminal record, or is this like getting fired for a traffic violation?

[dada78641 871]

On 04/04/2021 at 21:57, Tigerboy1966 said:

People f*ck things up and hurt the ones they love. That's life, unfortunately.

Counterpoint: if someone sprays insect repellent into a child's eyes, we shouldn't suck our teeth and shrug and go "well, those things just happen sometimes I guess"

[ViscountessNivlac 24]

On 04/04/2021 at 10:29, Seiyashi said:

At the risk of sounding sanctimonious, perhaps we should dial back a little on the prejudging of the wife

Can you prejudge after somebody has quite literally been judged?

[Akinomaki 37,406]

15 hours ago, Churaumi said:

So...will she have a criminal record, or is this like getting fired for a traffic violation?

She was found guilty in a criminal trial (though a shortened one), so she has a criminal record now, but some traffic violations in Japan may lead to a bigger fine.

Edited April 6, 2021 by Akinomaki

[rhyen 1,732]

Myjetsetlife channel playlist

 

[Akinomaki 37,406]

On 06/11/2020 at 15:25, Akinomaki said:

Yoshikaze may soon be running out of money.

Apart from the lawyers to whom he entrusted the Oita court case, he'll also have to pay the lawyers to whom he entrusted his  divorce case. After a matrimonial quarrel where his wife had called the police, he went with his 2 children to his parent's house in Oita for a while and now has rent a 2nd apartment house to live with them in Tokyo, separated from his wife. With a divorce, he will not only lose a good deal of his property, he also will have no okamisan for a new heya anymore. http://www.news-postseven.com/archives/20201106_1609988.html

The future does not look good for Yoshikaze

The ex-wife of Yoshikaze - divorced in March - had been found shot dead on July 21st, possibly pair suicide with the guy she was with, who owned the gun and had a license for it. One shot the other and then himself, presumably. Nakamura-oyakata had not been in contact with her since the divorce. https://www.dailyshincho.jp/article/2023/08180602/

There have been no reports about how his court case against his hometown is going. https://npn.co.jp/article/detail/200031307

[Koorifuu 699]

Good lord, I REALLY hope the kids are doing OK within possible.

[RabidJohn 1,417]

7 hours ago, Akinomaki said:

One shot the other and then himself, presumably.

Given the allegations elsewhere in this thread, "and then herself" seems at least equally likely - if we're speculating.

Shocking turn of events regardless.