In March 2007, Shukan Gendai published an article naming top-ranked sumo wrestlers who it said had been involved in match-fixing in the past. Three of the wrestlers and the Japan Sumo Association subsequently filed defamation lawsuits against the publisher, Kodansha Ltd., and several weeks ago one of the cases started in the Tokyo District Court.

Such allegations have been tossed around for decades, but this is the first time a media outlet has been taken to court for making match-fixing claims, so it's interesting to observe how the rest of the media is covering the trial, in particular TV pundits who specialize in sumo.

Sportswriter Masayuki Tamaki has been a frequent guest on TV talk shows since the trials started, and he says he believes yaocho — the term used to describe match-fixing — is the wrong one to use in this case since it implies a bout has been fixed beforehand for the purpose of guaranteeing that bets placed on a certain contender will pay off. None of the allegations made in the Shukan Gendai article say that the matches were fixed for gambling purposes, so according to Tamaki a more appropriate word would be dekiyama, which apparently is only used in sumo and refers to a match whose outcome is predetermined. The morpheme deki- means something is completed, which is why the recent contest for the president of the Liberal Democratic Party, which everyone knew would be won by Taro Aso, was called a deki-race by the media.