Hideo Kaito's Oct. 11 letter, "Staggering blow to sumo" -- in which Kaito says he had viewed sumo as a more humane sport than, say, Western boxing/wrestling or Thai kick-boxing and credits former yokozuna Wakanohana with bringing gentleness to matches by pulling defeated wrestlers up from their fallen position -- exhibits two strong Japanese tendencies: to see Japan through rose-tinted glasses, and to use foreign things or people as a foil against which the Japanese counterpart is seen to be a bright and shiny thing of wonder.
In truth, sumo is anything but kind and gentle. This can be seen from the final product: the sumo wrestler. There is nothing more predictable and boring than the interviews that winning wrestlers give. They are essentially all the same: a few grunts and a barely audible promise to "do my best from now on." They have obviously learned to completely mask any hint of their individual personalities and behave as caricatures of a misguided ideal for "dignity."
They are products of a systematic assault on their innate human dignity, the tools of which are physical and psychological humiliation, coercion and bullying, coupled with the threat of ostracism. Actually, sumo is a salient microcosm of the larger Japanese society.
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