Sumo wrestlers won t have to be so hefty as sport grapples with decline
Japan s famously huge sumo wrestlers will be thinner and shorter in the future after the sport s governing body relaxed minimum standards for height and weight in an effort to lure more young recruits.
The Japan Sumo Association has dropped a rule that professional wrestlers must be at least 167cm (5ft 6in) tall and 67kg (10st 7lb) in weight, provided they pass a fitness test. The change is intended to address a plummet in the numbers of young men seeking to become rikishi, as sumo wrestlers are known.
From a peak of 160 in 1992, there were only 34 applicants this spring, the peak time for recruitment, which takes place six times a year. In the past, aspiring wrestlers were known to drink large quantities of water before the weigh-in to meet the minimum requirement. One even had a silicone implant on the top of his head to make himself taller.
The slump is partly because of declining birth rates, which have caused the overall population to shrink by some 2 million since the peak of 128.1 million in 2008. At little more than 10 per cent, the proportion of children in the population is the lowest in any country with a population above 40 million.
The austere and physically demanding life of a rikishi is less attractive to many young men than it was a generation ago. In recent years, sumo has been shaken by scandals over match fixing and gambling, and by the enforced retirement of one of its grand champions after he broke a junior wrestler s skull with a beer bottle. In 2018 a senior sumo referee was disgraced after it emerged that he had sexually assaulted a male junior.
That’s a pretty alarming visual. But why not let sumo evolve and become a sport with more conventional attributes? Better than just letting it die.