Japan’s sumo wrestlers will be thinner and shorter after change of rules

Japan’s sumo wrestlers will be thinner and shorter after minimum standards were relaxed to address a drastic fall in new recruits.

Sumo wrestlers competing in Tokyo this year. Future rikishi, as they are known, may be more slightly built. Picture: Getty Images

Japan’s sumo wrestlers will be thinner and shorter after the governing body relaxed minimum standards to lure more recruits.

The Japan Sumo Association has dropped a rule stipulating that professional wrestlers must be at least 167cm tall and weigh 67kg, provided they pass a fitness test. The change is intended to address a drastic fall in the number of young men seeking to become rikishi.

From a high of 160 in 1992, there were only 34 applicants this spring, the peak time for recruitment. In the past, aspiring wrestlers often drank water before the weigh-in to meet the requirement. One even had a silicone implant to make himself taller.

Chiyonfuji, an example of a slimmer Japanese sumo wrestler, and Yokozuna Akebono. Pictues: Wikipedia

The slump is partly because of falling birthrates, which have caused the population to shrink by about 2 million since the peak, in 2008, of 128.1 million. Children make up just over 10 per cent of the population.

Sumo has been shaken by scandals over match fixing, gambling and the enforced retirement of one grand champion, after he broke a junior wrestler’s skull with a beer bottle. In 2018, it emerged that a senior referee had sexually assaulted a junior.

The authorities are unlikely to admit women, who are banned from entering the dohyo, or sumo ring. The taboo is connected to sumo’s roots in Shinto, Japan’s native religion. In 1990, Mayumi Moriyama, Japan’s first female deputy cabinet secretary, was barred from presenting a trophy. Ten years later, Fusae Ota, the governor of Osaka, faced the same ban.

In 2018, a mayor collapsed while giving a speech at a tournament. Two women, one a nurse, rushed to resuscitate him. But a voice came over the loudspeakers ordering them away because they were female.

The Times