Sumo wrestling season?

The Sumo and the Yakuza

Sumo is a traditional Japanese sport.

How was the sumo wrestling today?

You know quite a lot about Sumo.

Sumo is the traditional sport of Japan.

Decision on the case of The Mayagna (Sumo) Awas Tingni Community v. Nicaragua, 2000

Sumo evolved over many centuries as a peripatetic form of public entertainment in which the wrestlers, trainers, and promoters depended on local gangs to secure facilities and an audience, including selling the tickets. This cozy relationship was supposedly dissolved when the traditional Sumo circle was modernized, becoming today s JSA.

Backed by an enraged public, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) recently searched some 30 sites, including a raid on a major Sumo stable, or training center. The move was made in an effort to seize material evidence about the nexus between Sumo wrestling and the Yakuza, Japan s Mafia like organized crime groups that date from the seventeenth century.

So it is likely that next year will see a showdown between the police and the Yamaguchi Gumi. The Sumo gambling scandal, indeed, may be a prelude to it.

In September 1995, UNDCP also appointed Japanese sumo champion Takanohana to lend his support, as Goodwill Ambassador against drugs, to the activities of the Drug Abuse Prevention Centre in Tokyo.

To date, UNDCP has appointed three goodwill ambassadors for raising public consciousness about drug problems (the Chung Trio from the Republic of Korea, Sumo Grand Champion Takanohana of Japan and the Tahuichi Aguilera Football Academy of Bolivia).

Sumo, as a traditional spectacle, cannot survive without respectable patrons. But Japan s wealthiest people, such as entrepreneurs, medical doctors, and lawyers, are nowadays less willing or financially able to continue patronizing the sport, particularly since the collapse of Japan s asset bubble in the early 1990 s.

Allegations of match fixing, dope smoking, orgies, and ties to gangsters among the sport s top stars have enraged the Japanese public. Indeed, Japanese Sumo circles are now facing growing public infamy, causing many Japanese to wonder if the country, after 20 years of stagnation, is capable of purifying itself.

The elders of the Japan Sumo Association (JSA), the retired wrestlers who govern the sport, see themselves less as administrators than as guardians of a holy tradition. They promote wrestlers to the highest ranks not just on brute merit, but according to how much hinkaku (dignity) they are judged to possess.

Instead, these respectable supporters have gradually been replaced over the years by a shady new class of rich Japanese, who have risen through loan sharking and other dubious businesses. As a result, some Sumo stables have become associated in one way or another with people running front companies for Yakuza organizations.

Indeed, there is a long tradition of retired police parachuting into lucrative posts in Pachinko, the de facto gambling industry and, to a lesser extent, across the public gambling sectors. These links raise the question of the real objective of the Japanese police, a bureaucratic behemoth, in their investigation of the Sumo circle.

In reaching out to civil society with the assistance of its goodwill ambassadors, such as the Sumo Grand Champion Takanohana of Japan, the Chung Trio from the Republic of Korea and the Tahuichi Aguilera Football Academy of Bolivia, UNDCP educates young people about the dangers of drug abuse and promotes anti drug messages.

Once he is released, it is anticipated that he will direct a major drive to revitalize his organization through both its traditional and new illegal activities. Some analysts suspect that the Sumo circle has provided some of the best match tickets to Yakuza leaders, who, as matches were shown on television, sent signals to the godfather that they remain loyal to him.