The battle between former sumo grand champion siblings Wakanohana and Takanohana over the legacy of their father, sumo elder Futagoyama, started well before his death from mouth cancer on May 30 at the age of 55. The press, however, didn't dive into the melee until after Futogayama's body was placed in a box with his beloved -- and obviously lethal -- Mild Sevens, which the former ozeki will presumably chain-smoke on that big dohyo in the sky.

It's not clear if the media's previous restraint was due to tact or ignorance, but once the funeral was over it was every reporter for himself. The surviving sons, whose real names are Masaru and Koji Hanada, openly admitted that they are, in fact, not speaking to each other and haven't for years. During the pair's dominant period in the 90s, when they were the stars of their father's almost invincible stable, the press loved to portray the Hanadas as the ideal Japanese family, though one could hardly call them examples. Rich, imperious, and completely removed from the everyday lives of most Japanese, the Hanada clan was about as average a family as Michael Jackson's.

The media's sudden and overwhelming obsession with the story is thus self-generating, since it was the media who placed the Hanadas on a pedestal from which their fall was much farther than it should have been. However, the real reason the saga has had huge coverage in the tabloid press is that none of the principals are acting the way they were portrayed 10 years ago.