Bizarre Sport #5
I just realized it's been quite a while since I've done a "bizarre sport" entry, so when I came across this article, I figured it would fit the bill.
I think everyone would agree that sumo wrestling in itself is a bizarre sport. Anytime nearly naked fat men bounce around off of each other, it is bizarre.
Well, it seems like young people in Japan don't want to strip down to a loin-cloth and bounce around off of each other. Youth participation in sumo wrestling in Japan has been declining, so the association wants to let the youths add clothing (a biking short type garment).
The amateurs insist that young Japanese men are put off the sport by the loincloths, which leave them feeling uncomfortably exposed.
“Young people, especially adolescents, don’t want to take up anything they don’t see as fashionable,” Joji Kagawa, the chairman of the Amateur Sumo Federation, said. “So keeping teenagers in sumo is difficult.”
Oh, but the professional association won't budge!
The professional Japan Sumo Association is refusing to countenance the pants at the sport’s holy of holies — the Hall of the National Pursuit in the Ryogoku district of Tokyo. The dohyo there is considered to be a sacred spot where women are not allowed to set foot — and certainly not male wrestlers in modish “pants”.
...
“The Hall of the National Pursuit has set rules and customs,” the spokesman for the Japan Sumo Association, a former wrestler known as Takasago, said. “We have no intention of allowing children in shorts into the ring.”
I never would've thought it, but I guess some people enjoy seeing fat, flabby men in thongs!
