Re: Sumo and the Right Wing

[Doreen Simmons <jz8d-smmn@asahi-net.or.jp>]

At 11:05 PM +0900 6/6/02, John Racine wrote:
>
>Sorry, Doreen.  I must have misinterpreted what you had written.
>
>When were the trucks blaring away, anyway?  Was this during the ascendance
>of Konishiki and Akebono?

No, why should they object to them? It was at the time of the "Yaocho" 
stink kicked up by the former Onaruto oyakata and subsequently by his prize 
pupil Kotetsuyama. Suddenly there was a truck outside Michinoku-beya 
accusing, of all people, the former  Kirishima of buying and selling bouts, 
and another truck outside the Kokuigkan. This was just on ordinary days 
outside of basho time.

These efforts were apparently ignored and the trucks returned during 
hon-basho time (I really forget which basho they were, it was more than 
one,  and they were out there in front of the Kokugikan blaring away at the 
times when the majority of the customers turn up. If the Kyokai had been 
willing to do anything for the sake of peace and quiet, _that_ is when 
they'd have done a pay-off -- but as I say, the trucks were there on a 
regular basis and the Kyokai people were doing their best to ignore them.

Anybody with any sense knows that the best --no, the only -- way to deal 
with a blackmailer is to tough it out until he realises there's nothing in 
it for him, and goes away.

>Can we assume that eventually the Kyokai paid them off, and that's why the
>trucks aren't out in front of the Kokugikan anymore?
Sukebeejima

Peronally, I infer from the fact that the handful of men in the black 
trucks have turned their attention back to the Russian Embassy and 
elsewhere is that their efforts with the Kyokai did NOT pay off  and bosses 
decided that they were wasting their time. The driver who is always in the 
lead truck certainly didn't smile for my camera when I took his picture and 
pointed out  to the bystanders, "Look! all that noise and there's only two 
men in there!"

Hope I haven't missed anything, I'm in a tearing hurry as usual.



~Doreen Simmons
      <jz8d-smmn@asahi-net.or.jp>~