Sumo wrestling in Japan is exposing a serious problem. According to an article of the Seattle Times, police have found text messages to plan how to fix bouts on confiscated cell phones which implicate 13 wrestlers. And, the text messages indicate that the wrestlers routinely fixed matches and charged thousands dollars per match to do so, according to Japan's Kyodo news service. This is pathetic for me and sumo fans.
At the same time, this is interesting for me because this news reminds me of Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. In the book, Steven already showed evidence to fix bouts of sumo. His blog and comments for his article also pointed out the thing. It means that empirical research and a method based on data would be useful to reveal a part of reality.
Finally, the following is my reaction to the news:
I have been concerned about sumo wrestling since coming to the U.S. because it's typical of Japanese tradition and culture. For example, many people in a class of college know about, and are interested in sumo wrestling, so they asked me to explain about it more in details than they know. Also, as another instance, I saw a video about sumo wrestlers by National Geographic Channel a few months ago. In the video, American wrestlers were featured. I was very impressed with their attitude and effort toward sumo, and the fact that they purely love playing sumo. However, at the same time, I was ashamed at professional sumo wrestlers because they are losing a proper attitude, which means they look like more sticking to gain money.
My feeling and impression to sumo wrestling is getting worse throughout a series of scandals -- the baseball gambling, using marijuana among three Russian wrestlers, and so on. As the article by the Seattle Times pointed out, sumo is seen by most Japanese as not only a sport but a bastion of Japanese tradition and culture, and sumo wrestlers are expected to observe a high standard of public behavior. Is this too much expectation for them? I think no. We Japanese people are positively able to introduce sumo to other countries' people as a Japanese culture (as a result, sumo received positive reputation from the world, too. It is give-and-take) because it has kept depicting what is a respectable manner and behavior for Japanese people, which is deeply connected with Japanese image of tradition and culture. If sumo wrestling lost the image, we would never introduce it to others as a Japanese culture.
