Women in sumo? Around the world and in Japan

[Kaminariyuki 500]

So, I've understood that women are not allowed in professional sumo in Japan, not only forbidden to compete but even to enter the dohyo. I try to be culturally sensitive, although I screw up all the time, so I'm not trying to convince the Japanese of what they should do. A few of the folks who are ragging on Enho got me thinking, though, if some people are opposed to a small rikishi who is outside the norm, what would they think of women competing? I am very curious about what folks think on this subject, particularly from countries around the world, which makes this forum a perfect place to pose the question. I know that in the US women do compete in sumo and with a tiny bit of research have found that there are women in Japan who also wrestle (I was a little bit surprised!).

OK, I said I try to be culturally sensitive, but in this case I can't help myself, "What are you big beefy guys afraid of?"

Here's a really interesting video, IMO. Please jump in with your opinions.

 

[Asashosakari 19,655]

Regardless of what anyone in the Kyokai or among sumo fans might think about women's sumo, there's nothing stopping anyone from establishing a professional women's sumo circuit. The problem, as with anything professional sports-related, is that enough people will need to be willing to pay to watch it. Unless you believe the Kyokai (or some other entity) should be forced to subsidize it?

[ALAKTORN 346]

2 hours ago, Asashosakari said:

Regardless of what anyone in the Kyokai or among sumo fans might think about women's sumo, there's nothing stopping anyone from establishing a professional women's sumo circuit. The problem, as with anything professional sports-related, is that enough people will need to be willing to pay to watch it. Unless you believe the Kyokai (or some other entity) should be forced to subsidize it?

I think the point was just to allow women in ōzumō, not keep them apart.

I’m not sure what kinda concerns there might be in mixing sexes in such a scantily-clad contact sport, otherwise I think it’d be just sexism to not allow them.

Edited September 18, 2019 by ALAKTORN

[Tsuchinoninjin 1,276]

I mean, most sport is subsidized in Japan, men and womens. Either through tax exemptions or massive corporate involvement above and beyond anything else in the western world (with motorsport being an exception).

Does Japan need a 3-league deep professional volleyball pyramid for both sexes? Probably not but it exists.

Edited September 18, 2019 by Tsuchinoninjin

[Asashosakari 19,655]

20 minutes ago, Tsuchinoninjin said:

I mean, most sport is subsidized in Japan, men and womens. Either through tax exemptions or massive corporate involvement above and beyond anything else in the western world (with motorsport being an exception).

Corporate spending still means that somebody thinks it's worth their money to support it. The reasons really don't matter. And I don't think of tax exemptions as particularly relevant considering they're omni-present in all manner of economic activity, for better or worse.

Surely a lot (most?) of those volleyball players are just corporate amateurs with (at least nominally) a regular job? Would be nothing wrong with that model for a women's sumo league, but I certainly don't see the demand for it. There's corporate men's sumo like that, of course, and nobody really gives a damn about that either.

Edited September 18, 2019 by Asashosakari

[Akinomaki 40,780]

First think about why there is no professional baseball league for women - and is there a female  professional American football league in the US? - I also haven't heard much about the success of the female pro-basketball players

[Yamanashi 3,904]

21 minutes ago, Akinomaki said:

First think about why there is no professional baseball league for women - and is there a female  professional American football league in the US? - I also haven't heard much about the success of the female pro-basketball players

There is a professional basketball league in the USA -- the Women's National Basketball Association.  It is viable (with large corporate sponsorships -- large corporations can virtue-signal about wokeness or whatever it's called).  As every creature on the planet knows, the U.S. women won the Women's World Cup.  Then they got everyone to complain about unfair salaries for the women until it was found that the women were getting more money than the U.S. men -- so nothing much on that front recently.

No female pro American football league per se; there is a female soccer player who may make an NFL squad next year as a placekicker -- she's very good.

Other than the above example, most women seem to want to have their own BB and soccer leagues.  The big kerfuffle in the US right now is mediocre high school and college men who come to realize they are trans-women, and set records in women's events at the expense of cis-women.

 

[Tsuchinoninjin 1,276]

3 hours ago, Asashosakari said:

Corporate spending still means that somebody thinks it's worth their money to support it. The reasons really don't matter. And I don't think of tax exemptions as particularly relevant considering they're omni-present in all manner of economic activity, for better or worse.

Surely a lot (most?) of those volleyball players are just corporate amateurs with (at least nominally) a regular job? Would be nothing wrong with that model for a women's sumo league, but I certainly don't see the demand for it. There's corporate men's sumo like that, of course, and nobody really gives a damn about that either.

Right, so a corporate league might pop in the future for a few years. Maybe when some su-jo's get into some high corporate positions in a few decades, who knows.

In my own experience, I don't really understand what the requirements are for corporate athletes to work a regular job in the company and actually producing output, or a 'regular job' where they have a title but are just not there usually. Ekiden guy, worked his butt off. Rugby guy, nope couldn't figure out what he did (in a time where Ekiden was much bigger...). Head of the cheerleading squad - nope actually didn't do much in the office. I don't think people even know we had a corporate cheerleading squad... Maybe some same-highschool stuff with a board member? That stuff is always opaque.

[Rocks 1,809]

7 hours ago, Thundersnow said:

So, I've understood that women are not allowed in professional sumo in Japan, not only forbidden to compete but even to enter the dohyo. I try to be culturally sensitive, although I screw up all the time, so I'm not trying to convince the Japanese of what they should do. A few of the folks who are ragging on Enho got me thinking, though, if some people are opposed to a small rikishi who is outside the norm, what would they think of women competing? I am very curious about what folks think on this subject, particularly from countries around the world, which makes this forum a perfect place to pose the question. I know that in the US women do compete in sumo and with a tiny bit of research have found that there are women in Japan who also wrestle (I was a little bit surprised!).

OK, I said I try to be culturally sensitive, but in this case I can't help myself, "What are you big beefy guys afraid of?"

Afraid of? Probably mostly having to discuss this issue from a disingenuous position. As your question and this video illustrate. 

To begin with women are not allowed in professional sumo for religious reasons, not athletic ones.  The Sumo association has determined that keeping the Shinto aspects and traditions are critical to the survival of their sport as it keeps a very close association with the sport as a distinctly Japanese institution of interest to the nation in maintaining.  IMO they are correct in doing this. Doing so allows them to survive the various scandals which invariably come up and maintains what is basically the only viable long standing professional wrestling league of any kind in the world.  Anyone making a decent living from wrestling in the rest of the world is either doing it coaching amateurs or competing in a WWE style "wrestling" competition.  In neither case are those people actually wrestling to make a living.

As stated already there is nothing stopping women from competing on an amateur level or stopping the establishment of any type of women's professional league, other than little to no interest on the part of the paying public in such a thing. There exist so few women's professional leagues, and those that do barely provide income, for the same reason there are not professional middle aged men's leagues. People want to pay to see, or at least believe they are seeing, the best in a sport. Middle aged men, except in exceptional cases, and women do not and will not ever compete at the same level in a given physical sport as men aged 18-35 do given the same levels of training, experience and desire. It is not even close. No amount of money, training or support is ever going to change this. The US women's soccer team have been given top notch training, support and competition for decades. It shows. They are the best women's team on average by far. They also barely compete against any decent boy's high school team. And when I say boys I mean boys. Not 18 year olds. It's highly doubtful they could even score a goal or maintain possession of the ball against anything except an intramural level college men's team. 

 

So, the real question here is not what is anyone "afraid of".  The question is why should anybody care women can't earn a living doing something competing at an amateur level at best when we don't care that men with the same ability to compete as those women can't either? 

[Kaminariyuki 500]

15 hours ago, Rocks said:

And when I say boys I mean boys. Not 18 year olds. It's highly doubtful they could even score a goal or maintain possession of the ball against anything except an intramural level college men's team. 

 

LOL, this is what I meant, when I said "afraid of."  If you're talking about the FC Dallas under 15 team, this statement is a major exaggeration. It won't be happening, but the US Women's soccer team would crush most US college men's soccer teams in a real match. I played collegiate soccer, and I'm fairly confident if not certain, of this statement. I have an anecdote about a pick-up game I was once in as a fifty year old with female US college players, but it doesn't really add much here.

Clearly, I was trolling a bit with the "afraid of" statement, but I thought the video was really good. I enjoyed it, was generally impressed and I'm pretty certain that Yamanaka-san would dispatch many of the male forum members here readily, myself included. Of course, most of us are not in our prime and many of us have never stepped into the dohyo. That said, I doubt she would last long in Jonokuchi. I am truly interested in what views folks have from different parts of the world. It seems to me as a human being, not as a man, that women are the great repressed majority on this planet. And, I find myself often pulling for the underdog. As with Enho, I don't expect everyone to be with me. 

I guess I believe in equal access and treatment, but historically it's a rather new concept, and definitely not embraced everywhere. Anywhere? I get the Shinto side, though, a good point. Religions do have a tendency to realign with social values as they change, as opposed to going the route of institutional seppaku. 

[Rocks 1,809]

1 hour ago, Thundersnow said:

LOL, this is what I meant, when I said "afraid of."  If you're talking about the FC Dallas under 15 team, this statement is a major exaggeration. It won't be happening, but the US Women's soccer team would crush most US college men's soccer teams in a real match. I played collegiate soccer, and I'm fairly confident if not certain, of this statement. I have an anecdote about a pick-up game I was once in as a fifty year old with female US college players, but it doesn't really add much here.

Losing 5-2 to middle schoolers is hardly an exaggeration. The Australian women lost 7-0 to some 15 year olds. That isn't exaggeration. It won't be happening again because it's an embarrassment and doesn't help the narrative. Not only would they not crush most men's college teams they would struggle to compete against Division III teams. Anyone observing a women's game can see that. That is what happens when you are moving 10-20% slower than everyone on the opposing team. Kind of similar to a 50 year old playing against 18-21 year old women who have been training for years. 

Don't believe me? Ask the Williams' sisters who only managed to take 3 games off an over the hill 30 year old , mediocre at best, men's player who smoked cigarettes during the changeover.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/tennis/aus/2017/01/21/serena-williams-nicole-gibbs-australian-open/96876832/

It's doubtful Serena, an exceptional women's tennis player, would manage to take even 1 game off a Top 100 men's tennis player even at her peak.  If she could return the serve that is. Which is why you won't even hear her comment on it. 

Women athletes aren't being repressed. They are competing and being compensated at a level commensurate with their ability in comparison to their male peers. 

Edited September 19, 2019 by Rocks

[Kaminariyuki 500]

I concede your general point, but you are exaggerating. FC Dallas isn't a regular boys team. It's the earliest recruiting team for a professional men's MLS team with professional rather than middle school teachers for a coaching staff and is essentially an all-star team of all the promising talent the FC Dallas professional recruiters could gather, and the US women did score, twice. Not only that, but it was just a training exercise for the gals. It wasn't a real match for them, while it was a serous plum for the boys. Your overall point is quite sound, though. There is a genetic disadvantage between the genders for women. I don't know that that's a good reason for excluding exceptional cases. As Yamanashi mentions, we may have a female place kicker in the NFL someday, maybe next year. I haven't verified that story, but it seems plausible without checking as there have been a few others that came close.

I won't respond to this thread further, even though I started it. I hadn't intended to argue, but to have a discussion. My fault for the trolling... I accept the blame for a good discussion destroyed. I meant to provoke a little, but hadn't intended to really get under anyone's skin. And here I am responding anyway.

My basic question was "Why not the girls?" And, how does the view change in different cultures, even though I rather know the answer to that. We haven't quite crawled out of the Victorian Age on this one even in Europe and North American. Maybe in New Zealand. Maybe.

[Katooshu 3,333]

I have no problem with women competing in amasumo, which they are free to do already at regional, national, and international levels, and someone can try to spearhead a pro organization for women if they are so dedicated. I don't believe that women should be prevented from being able to train and compete in sumo just because they are women. 

Suggesting that ozumo needs to change so that women can live in heyas as rikishi and compete in ozumo vs men (not sure this being suggested, but it's a bit hard for me to follow what point is trying to be made) is silly though.

Edited September 19, 2019 by Katooshu

[Rocks 1,809]

13 minutes ago, Thundersnow said:

My basic question was "Why not the girls?" And, how does the view change in different cultures, even though I rather know the answer to that. We haven't quite crawled out of the Victorian Age on this one even in Europe and North American. Maybe in New Zealand. Maybe.

This conversation proceeded the way it did exactly because the the way you started and finished it with a logical fallacy which is that the reason "Why not the girls?" is due to cultural factors when you yourself concede that men have a genetic advantage over their women peers. There are no exceptional cases. The idea that there is a woman who could compete on a equal level with the Top Tier Professional men in any given physical sport is false so why should anybody care? 

[ALAKTORN 346]

18 minutes ago, Katooshu said:

Suggesting that ozumo needs to change so that women can live in heyas as rikishi and compete in ozumo vs men is silly though.

Why?

[Asashosakari 19,655]

3 hours ago, Thundersnow said:

LOL, this is what I meant, when I said "afraid of."  If you're talking about the FC Dallas under 15 team, this statement is a major exaggeration. It won't be happening, but the US Women's soccer team would crush most US college men's soccer teams in a real match. I played collegiate soccer, and I'm fairly confident if not certain, of this statement. I have an anecdote about a pick-up game I was once in as a fifty year old with female US college players, but it doesn't really add much here.

So you played collegiate soccer 25+ years ago? Now, I don't think that much of the level of soccer in the US in general (inasmuch as I think about soccer at all, which isn't often), but I daresay the collegiate squads are quite a bit improved compared to your active days.
 

3 hours ago, Thundersnow said:

It seems to me as a human being, not as a man, that women are the great repressed majority on this planet. And, I find myself often pulling for the underdog. As with Enho, I don't expect everyone to be with me. 

Are you similarly concerned with the fact that male models have fewer and lower-paid earning opportunities than female models do? It is what it is. Not all entertainment products have equivalent levels of appeal to the public, which determines how much money can be made by those creating them, and nothing short of massive social engineering will change that. Moralizing on the internet certainly won't.

[Asashosakari 19,655]

1 hour ago, ALAKTORN said:

Why?

Because a mixed-sex competition combat sport would be such a collossally stupid idea that nobody besides (apparently) you is going to make a case for it.

[ALAKTORN 346]

4 minutes ago, Asashosakari said:

Because a mixed-sex competition combat sport would be such a collossally stupid idea that nobody besides (apparently) you is going to make a case for it.

Why? Because they’re weaker? Then they’d naturally be “banned” rather than having to institute a ban for no real reason.

*colossally

[Eikokurai 3,437]

Is there much demand for women to be included coming from outside of the sumo world? I know there was by some uninformed social justice types in the West after that nurse scandal a year or two back, but that was just people jumping in on a topic they knew nothing about just for the opportunity to signal some virtue and get offended, completely blind to the insensitivity they were showing towards a significant part of another country’s cultural heritage. I don’t know if there was actually much demand from within Japan for sumo to open up and ‘modernize’.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Eikokurai

[ALAKTORN 346]

7 minutes ago, Eikokurai said:

completely blind to the insensitivity they were showing towards a significant part of another country’s cultural heritage.

“Tradition” is a horrible excuse for anything.

 

7 minutes ago, Eikokurai said:

I don’t know if there was actually much demand from within Japan for sumo to open up and ‘modernize’.

That was a different issue (about women not being allowed on the dohyō, rather than compete in ōzumō) and yes, there was demand within Japan to “modernize”. Plenty of stuff about it has been posted in this forum.

[Eikokurai 3,437]

15 minutes ago, ALAKTORN said:

“Tradition” is a horrible excuse for anything.

 

That was a different issue (about women not being allowed on the dohyō, rather than compete in ōzumō) and yes, there was demand within Japan to “modernize”. Plenty of stuff about it has been posted in this forum.

Sometimes appeals to tradition are a logical fallacy, but we have to consider the Japanese context. Sumo is two things: it’s a sport, where athletes compete for championships, and it’s a living artefact of the nation’s cultural heritage. As a sport the Kyokai has room for maneuvre, but as cultural heritage, it has much less. The protection and promotion of sumo as a part of Japanese culture is part of its mandate. Sumo is literally run under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology. It’s not a private comp like the NFL or the Premier League. Sumo belongs to the state, to the Japanese people, and the men who currently run it are little more than temporary custodians. They are free to make reforms regarding the administration of sumo as a sport, for example about the prize money, promotion requirements, jungyo dates, etc, but are constrained by what they feel they can do as regards the rites and ceremonies associated with it. Nobody in the Kyokai wants to be the guy (or guys) who altered forever a part of Japanese culture. No doubt they fear a backlash greater than any which might come from not letting women on a dohyo. 

[Rocks 1,809]

31 minutes ago, ALAKTORN said:

“Tradition” is a horrible excuse for anything.

How glib of you. Is this true in the case of sumo? Let me ask you this. What exactly do you think are the chances anyone would be of making a living in a sport where huge over weight men wrestle in loincloths if it had been introduced in the last 50 years? Tradition is the entire reason still exists today.  I'd call that a pretty good excuse.

37 minutes ago, ALAKTORN said:

That was a different issue (about women not being allowed on the dohyō, rather than compete in ōzumō) and yes, there was demand within Japan to “modernize”. Plenty of stuff about it has been posted in this forum.

Was there? I saw a lot of generated news stories for effect about it. Very similar to the video posted earlier. I saw little demand from the people actually buying tickets and supporting sumo.

[Eikokurai 3,437]

11 minutes ago, Rocks said:

How glib of you. Is this true in the case of sumo? Let me ask you this. What exactly do you think are the chances anyone would be of making a living in a sport where huge over weight men wrestle in loincloths if it had been introduced in the last 50 years? Tradition is the entire reason still exists today.  I'd call that a pretty good excuse.

Another good point, yes. The Kyokai not only don’t want to mess with tradition because they don’t want to go down on record as the guys who changed everything, but they also recognize that the tradition is sumo’s strength. Take it away and it’s just, as you put it, “over weight men ... in loincloths”. If introduced now the sport would go the way of all the other sports people have attempted to get off the ground in recent decades and failed. Without the traditions, sumo has less appeal. 

[ALAKTORN 346]

27 minutes ago, Rocks said:

Was there? I saw a lot of generated news stories for effect about it. Very similar to the video posted earlier. I saw little demand from the people actually buying tickets and supporting sumo.

You’ve changed the statement from ''within Japan'' to ''people actually buying tickets and supporting sumo''. While I’m sure there was some of the latter too, that is not what we had been arguing.

[Rocks 1,809]

3 minutes ago, ALAKTORN said:

You’ve changed the statement from ''within Japan'' to ''people actually buying tickets and supporting sumo''. While I’m sure there was some of the latter too, that is not what we had been arguing.

Sorry, I assumed when you said "within Japan" you intended that to mean the people who actually give a crap about sumo. My bad. if your intent in saying that was to suggest that there were a bunch of people who don't give a crap about sumo who wanted to stick their noses in it to further their agendas, I'd agree. Why exactly do you think anyone who doesn't support or follow sumo, or any sport for that matter,  should have any say in it?