Sat, Oct 06, 2007 page19

• Sumo body fires trainer in wake of novice's death

  • AFP
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  A sumo stable master who hit a teenage apprentice on the head with a beer bottle the day before the youngster died was permanently banished from the Japanese sport yesterday.

  The Japan Sumo Association dismissed Tokitsukaze, whose real name is Junichi Yamamoto, as the head of one of 53 stables which make up the lucrative circuit of professional sumo tournaments around the country.

  The association's top officials also agreed to cut their own pay by up to 50 percent for four months to atone for their failure to prevent the tragedy.

  

  Sumo wrestling stablemaster Tokitsukaze, center, enters a Japan Sumo Association executive meeting in Tokyo yesterday. He was dismissed as a member of the association over the death of a young wrestler in a training incident in July.

  PHOTO: AFP

  Tokitsukaze, 57, has admitted he hit novice Takashi Saito, 17, on the knee and head with a glass bottle the day before his sudden death in June. The stable elder has also admitted senior wrestlers used a baseball bat to beat the teenager, who had repeatedly tried to run away from the stable.

  The stable master has insisted the death was an accident but police are investigating the death as a possible criminal case.

  The sumo association's 10-member board unanimously approved Tokitsukaze's dismissal at a special meeting, its president Kitanoumi told reporters.

  "Tokitsukaze not only injured [Saito's] face by hitting him with a beer bottle but also connived in the violence used by senior wrestlers of the stable toward the late Mr. Saito," he said after questioning the stable master.

  Dismissal is the authority's severest penalty, preventing Tokitsukaze from ever returning to Japan's ancient sport. He is only the second stable master to be expelled by the association in its more than 80-year history.

  Saito collapsed during practice on June 26. He was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead from heart failure.

  Saito's death has turned the spotlight on harsh acts committed against sumo apprentices in the name of training or punishment.

  Coming on the heels of allegations of match-fixing and suspicions that a grand champion faked injuries, it's little wonder, perhaps, that the sport is struggling to attract new novices.

  "I heard new recruits are canceling," said Muneyoshi Fujisawa, a 55-year-old retired wrestler who reached the upper echelons of the ancient sport in his youth and maintains close contact with the closed world of sumo.

  Even before the latest scandal the number of apprentices was on the decline. The sumo authority approved 87 new novices last year, down 60 percent from the peak of 223 in 1992 when the nation was in the midst of a sumo boom thanks to the popularity of two Japanese wrestling brothers.

  Even in Fujisawa's day, when he went by the name of Kotonofuji in the ring, training was very hard.

  "It was really killing me. Sand or salt was often shoved into the mouth, and a bamboo sword was used to hit wrestlers. I was beaten, and beaten," said Fujisawa, who spent 20 years in the ring and five coaching.

  Some wrestlers, like Fujisawa, say that although they initially bore a grudge against senior disciples for hazing, in later years they felt grateful.

  "You would eventually realize that the huge resentment, pain and anguish drove you to move up," he said. "Any good players in any sport must have gone through beating or bullying."

  Sumo is "in an unprecedented crisis" due to the falling number of children and changing lifestyles, says a veteran journalist who has followed the sport for two decades.

  "Gifted children take up golf, soccer and other sports as their parents don't bother to send them to the scary world," he said, asking not to be named.
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