Girls start to break boundaries in world of sumo
Women are making inroads into male-only national sport of Japan, writes Daniel Schofield
No sport venerates its traditions more than sumo. In fact, it might be easier to think of sumo less as a sport and more of a series of religious rituals which have been passed from generation to generation over 2,000 years.
While many of those traditions contribute to sumo’s mystique and spirituality, others undermine its status as Japan’s national sport in the 21st Century, most notably in the form of the ban on professional female sumo wrestlers. Clear justification for the ban is hard to find, but it is thought to be based on ancient Shinto and Buddhist beliefs that females are “impure” because they menstruate.
Recent research suggests the ban was only
first enforced in the 1920s as professional sumo leagues took off with the backing of the nationalist government. However muddied the rationale, it is a ban that is zealously enforced. Not only are women banned from competing under the auspices of the Japan Sumo Association, but females are not allowed to even step foot in the dohyo, the sumo ring. This even applied to senior politicians, such as Fusae Ota, the former female governor of Osaka whose job traditionally entails presenting the Governor’s Prize at the Spring Grand Sumo Tournament.
An even more farcical incident took place last year when Ryozo Tatami, the mayor of Maizuru, collapsed after suffering a stroke while giving a speech at a sumo exhibition match. Two women, including a nurse, rushed into the dohyo to administer first aid only for the referee to repeatedly demand over the public address system they leave the sacred ring. In part because of their efforts, Tatami survived.
Even in a society as male-dominated as Japan – it ranked 110 of 149 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2018 gender equality report – this incident sparked outrage. A petition demanding that the Japan Sumo Association lose its tax-free status as a public interest corporation attracted more than 17,000 signatures. “The Japan Sumo Association thinks women impure, but without a woman’s physiology sumo wrestlers cannot be born,” the petition read. “The president [of the JSA] was born from a woman who had periods. If sumo is sacred, the physiology of a woman who gives birth is also sacred.”
Though the petition was unsuccessful, the pressure appears to be having an effect. Last week, school-age girls were allowed to compete in the Wanpaku national finals for the first time in its 34-year history. Previously, even girls who had won their regional championships, which do not adhere to such strict protocol as the JSA, were barred from competing in the finals at the Ryogoku Kokugikan, the spiritual home of the sport.
Yet with the Kokugikan being renovated to prepare it to host the boxing at the 2020 Olympics, organisers moved the tournament to the Okudo Sogo Sports Centre and invited 180 girls, aged nine to 12, to compete. It is being seen as a very small step in the right direction. The conservative JSA is showing no signs of relaxing its policy and the Kokugikan will again become off limits to females as soon as the Olympic boxing tournament concludes.
That competition may also accelerate the desire for change. The British Boxing Board of Control only lifted its own ban on issuing licences to female boxers in 1998. Fourteen years later, Nicola Adams became one of the biggest stars of the London Olympics.
Sumo wrestling, too, desires a place at the summer Games, but will need to prove it treats its male and female competitors equally. Ultimately, money might well prove the most effective weapon against misogyny.
“It’s not only boys who can practise and enjoy sumo,” Rie Ishibashi, who won the fifth-grade Wanpaku national finals, told The Japan Times.
“There are girls that like sumo too. I hope someday women can become pros.”
Sumo desires a place at the Olympics, but will need to treat both sexes equally