yaocho story becoming international

[Rowan Klein <rklein@surf.its.bond.edu.au>]

http://www.smh.com.au/breaking/0002/03/A62311-2000Feb3.shtml

the yaocho stuff is filling up space in the newspapers in Australia too.

Ex-sumo wrestler sets off media frenzy with bout-rigging

Source: AAP | Published: Thursday February 3, 7:22 AM

TOKYO, Feb 2 - In Japan, the sumo wrestling ring is sacred ground, blessed
by priests and purified with salt before each bout.

A headline-grabbing scandal over a former wrestler's claim that Japan's
national sport is rife with fixed contests has renewed suspicions that sumo
is not as clean as its image might suggest.

"I regret what I did in the past," Keisuke Itai said today, acknowledging
that he intentionally lost many bouts. "Sumo wrestlers are true athletes,
so there should be no fixed matches."

Since Itai first made his allegations last month, saying he wants to revive
flagging interest in the sport with a thorough cleansing, sumo officials
have issued ardent protests denying any problem.

As for fans, they aren't necessarily ruffled by the allegations.

"This kind of thing probably happens in any sport, and I imagine it happens
in sumo," said Mitsukuni Kida, 56, a ramen-noodle street vendor and sumo
devotee. "What can you really do about it? As long as it's not every
wrestler, I don't mind."

Now 2000 years old and with roots in Japan's indigenous Shinto religion,
sumo is, along with baseball, the country's most popular sport. Fans see it
as more of a cultural treasure than a mere competition.

Itai rose to the fourth-highest rank of komusubi but was not particularly
famous or popular. At 176 cm with a fighting weight of 133 kg, he retired
in 1991.

Although Itai accused several current stars of taking part in rigged bouts,
sumo experts were not impressed.

Andy Adams, publisher of Sumo World, a Tokyo-based magazine, said that
bout-rigging - usually arranged among the wrestlers themselves to help
someone score the extra win he needs for promotion to a higher rank - goes
back hundreds of years.

"There's an old tradition that if you rub my back this time, next time ...
I'll rub your back," said Adams. "It's unspoken. Nobody says anything to
anybody. It's just sort of understood."