Real Scandals & Genuine Challenges to Sumo's Traditional Image
The History of Sumo Wrestling
Chapter 9 · Real Scandals & Genuine Challenges to Sumo's Traditional Image
2007: A Death Inside a Stable
On 26 June 2007, a seventeen-year-old novice wrestler, Takashi Saitō — competing under the ring name Tokitaizan, only three months into his own sumo career — collapsed and died at the Tokitsukaze stable's own lodgings in Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture. The cause of death was initially reported as heart failure. Saitō's own father, refusing to accept that explanation, insisted on a real autopsy — which revealed that the young wrestler had been beaten with a beer bottle and a metal baseball bat, on the direct orders of his own stable master, Jun'ichi Yamamoto, who admitted to beating him personally and directing other wrestlers to do the same, citing Saitō's own "vague attitude" toward the sport.
Yamamoto was dismissed by the Japan Sumo Association in October 2007 — the first serving stable master the Association had ever removed. He and three wrestlers from the stable were arrested in February 2008 and charged with manslaughter; in May 2009, Yamamoto was sentenced to six years in prison.
2010–2011: Match-Fixing and an Unprecedented Cancellation
Rumours of yaocho — match-fixing — had circulated around professional sumo for years without ever being definitively proven. That changed in February 2011, when a police investigation into illegal baseball gambling among wrestlers and officials uncovered something else entirely: real text messages between wrestlers discussing the arrangement of specific match outcomes.
Cell phone texts, recovered during an unrelated gambling investigation, provided the first hard proof of bout-fixing the sport had ever produced.
The Japan Sumo Association cancelled the entire Spring Grand Sumo Tournament — the first time a tournament had ever been called off for this reason.
Twenty-three wrestlers were ultimately judged guilty of match-fixing and expelled; a May 2011 JSA investigative panel concluded the practice had been genuinely widespread, not isolated.
Cancelling an entire tournament was a real, unprecedented step for an institution whose own structure — established across the centuries this course has already traced, from the Sumai no Sechie's own fixed annual calendar in Chapter 3 through the Edo-period honbasho schedule in Chapter 5 — had never before been interrupted this way for reasons of integrity rather than external disaster.
2017: Harumafuji, and Asashoryu's Own Pattern Repeating
On 25 October 2017, the yokozuna Harumafuji — a Mongolian-born wrestler, like Asashoryu before him — struck a lower-ranked compatriot, Takanoiwa, with his hands and a karaoke remote control during a drinking gathering in Tottori, fracturing Takanoiwa's own skull. Harumafuji later said he had felt a senior wrestler's own responsibility to correct Takanoiwa's conduct after the younger wrestler kept checking his phone during a conversation — a justification that satisfied no one, least of all the Sumo Association itself.
Harumafuji announced his retirement the following month, telling reporters, "As a grand champion, I have done something that shouldn't be done." He was later fined 500,000 yen for the assault. The parallel to Chapter 8's own Asashoryu case is genuine and precise, not merely thematic: a Mongolian-born yokozuna, undisputed in the ring, brought down entirely by conduct outside it, with retirement the only real option once again because — as Chapter 7 established — a yokozuna cannot simply be demoted.
Looking Ahead
The capstone draws these three real cases together with everything else this course has covered — ritual, institution, rank, internationalisation, and scandal — into a single closing account of where sumo stands today, genuinely balanced between tradition and modernity.
Questions to Sit With
Yamamoto was the first serving stable master ever dismissed by the Sumo Association — after a death, not a lesser offence. What does that timing suggest about how much real internal oversight existed inside stables before this specific case forced a response?
Match-fixing rumours circulated for years before real proof surfaced almost by accident, through an unrelated gambling investigation. What does that suggest about the real limits of an institution investigating suspicions about its own members?
Harumafuji's case mirrors Asashoryu's own so closely — same nationality, same rank, same underlying cause. Does a second, nearly identical case make the pattern look more like bad individual luck, or more like a genuine, unaddressed structural problem?
Quick Reference — Chapter 9
- 2007: 17-year-old Takashi Saitō died after a beating ordered by his own stable master at Tokitsukaze stable; the master was sentenced to 6 years in prison in 2009, and was the first serving stable master ever dismissed by the JSA
- 2010–2011: real text-message evidence of match-fixing (yaocho), uncovered via an unrelated gambling investigation, led to the first-ever cancellation of a tournament; 23 wrestlers were ultimately expelled
- 2017: yokozuna Harumafuji assaulted fellow Mongolian wrestler Takanoiwa, fracturing his skull, and retired the following month — a real, precise echo of Asashoryu's own 2010 case from Chapter 8
- All three cases connect back to structures this course has already described: stable hierarchy (Ch.6), the honbasho tournament calendar (Ch.5), and the yokozuna's own irreversible no-demotion rule (Ch.7)