For any big fan of sumo, including myself, the recent marijuana scandal is a real blow. But what could keep me from continuing to follow the sport is not the alleged use of (gasp) marijuana by a trio of foreign wrestlers; rather it is the lack of rational thought on the part of the Japan Sumo Association, as well as the inevitable renewed backlash against foreigners in the sport that will no doubt occur.
The sumo world has lost three solid contributors to what made it a viable and interesting sport. In absolutely no possible way does the punishment of lifetime banishment fit the crime. Does the JSA not value the athletes that keep sumo alive? It is not as if huge lines of hopeful local boys are dying to make it big in the sumo world.
Temporary suspension would have been the right thing for the JSA to do. Sumo wrestlers are human and not the saints that some may wish them to be. Of course there are those who say foreigners and Japanese alike must respect the laws of the land, but the time has come for the powers that be as well as the general public to understand that the use of marijuana is not the major crime that it is understood to be in Japan.
It is time that Japan took a more realistic view of the drug, along the lines of some European countries or Canada. Moreover, what competitive advantage was gained by the wrestlers' use of the drug? Marijuana is not a performance-enhancing drug.
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