Sumo Drawing Full House in 19 Years: Why?

Yokozuna (Grand Champion) Hakuho and Harumafuji both sidelined on injury, the Fall Tournament of Sumo is booming and the 11,000-seat Ryogoku Kokugikan is full-packed so far and likely to go on packed for the rest of the tourney closing this Sunday.

The last time a 15-day tournament was full-housed in a streak was19 years ago in 1996 Grand Champion Takanohana won the Fall tournament 15-0 and his 15th championship.

So, Sumo is booming but why so?

Don't say it's ridiculous to ask why. Because, for one thing, there is no single hopeful among the Japanese wrestlers in sight to outwrestle the Mongolians. The last Japanese wrestler to win the championship was Champion Tochiazuma. That was 9 years ago. The Grand Sumo Tournament holds six seasonal tournaments a year. Tochiazuma's feat was, therefore, 58 tournaments ago.

Sumo is Japan's national sport rooting way back in the Tumulus Period. Clay images of Sumo wrestlers are unearthed and religious rituals are often associated with Sumo. Sumo is a socio-cultural, heavily religious tradition manifested in a form of sport. Japan had persistently lived up to this tradition up until it suffered one time a culture fatigue and much of its essential virtues were lost. This symptom took time to surface, and when it did a few years ago the world of Sumo was contaminated by habitual "match-fixing" or "made-up matches" amongst the wrestlers with little sense of guilt.

Most obvious were the matches in the last day of a 15-day tournament where one with 7-7 record pays the other for a win to come out of the tournament 8-7. Sumo's popularity fell to the ground. The Japan Sumo Association crumbled financially and nearly ruined socially. The association resorted to every means possible to uplift its prestige and to recover Sumo's reputation.

One of the measures, and very successful one too, was relaxing restrictions on the number of foreigners. In came flocks of "born wrestlers " from another land of "Sumo", Mongolia.

So, Sumo is booming but not on account of what most Japanese Sumo fans wish for. Will Sumo ever recover its popularity of bygone days?