When the Mayor of Maizuru, a city in southcentral Japan, had a stroke and collapsed while making a speech inside the ring at a local sumo tournament, two women, one of whom was a nurse, rushed to his assistance. But instead of appreciating their efforts, an agitated referee asked them to immediately leave the ring. The incident took place in early April and has sparked soul-searching in the country over gender discrimination in the name of tradition.
Sumo is not just a match between hefty wrestlers but is deeply intertwined with Shinto religious rites. It is believed that the spirits of kami or Shinto deities move through the wrestlers when they spar. Elaborate purifying rituals that involve the sprinkling of salt are part of the performance. Women are not welcome in any of this, being deemed impure because of menstruation and child birth, an aversion that is part of many Hindu, Buddhist and Shinto practices. They are, therefore, prohibited from entering the sumo dohyo (ring), a sacred space that would supposedly be “polluted” by their presence.
Television channels and social media were abuzz following the incident, with one Twitter user suggesting, “if this is the response to someone who tried to save a life, we had better sprinkle salt on the head of the sumo association”. The Japan Sumo Association (JSA) has since issued an apology and judged the referee’s response as inappropriate given the life-threatening nature of the situation. However, its general attitude to women and the sport appears to be unchanged.
Only a day later, when the Mayor of Takarazuka city, Tomoko Nakagawa, applied to give a speech from within the dohyo of a sumo tournament, she was turned down. “I’m a female Mayor but I am a human being,” she said, according to Japanese media, “but because I am a woman, despite being a Mayor, I cannot make a speech in the ring. It is regrettable and mortifying”.
And two days on, schoolgirls hoping to participate in a children’s spring sumo tour in Gunma prefecture were barred by the JSA, ostensibly on grounds of “girls’ safety”. In fact, women participate regularly in amateur sumo, although the professional circuit is exclusively male.
The sumo dohyo is not the only space that remains closed to women in Japan. The Mount Ōmine in Nara Prefecture, for example, bars women from climbing up to the temple on its summit, on the grounds of “religious tradition” (read impurity).
The divide runs deeper
Even areas not directly linked to religion are often difficult for women to gain access to, ranging from capsule hotels and golf courses, to sushi kitchens. Capsule hotels are budget accommodation where people sleep in tiny pod-like spaces. They are almost exclusively targeted at Japanese ‘salaried men’ on the assumption that many stay out drinking all night and miss the last train home. The same goes for men-only golf clubs. Until last year, women were not allowed to play on Sundays or to be eligible for full membership of the Kasumigaseki Country Club, the venue for the 2020 Olympics golf tournaments. And there is a long-standing belief that women’s higher body temperatures make them unsuitable for making sushi at the top level.
Slow change is taking place. There are some women sushi chefs and the number of capsule hotels realising that women can also drink too much and miss their trains home is growing. But the sumo ring, for the moment, seems to be a bridge, or dohyo , too far.
Pallavi Aiyar is an author and journalist based in Tokyo
