■ What is the reason why Yuinobu Izumi defends Kotomitsuki?

"What's wrong with Kotomitsuki!"

There was a phone call the night when the Japan Sumo Association announced a dismissal like a lizard's tail cut. Mr. Yuinobu Izumi, the second senior of the Kita University Judo Club. I was angry.

"If this is the case, the sumo wrestling will really disappear. The world is willing to crush the sumo wrestling. That's really good. It doesn't matter what you play in the sumo world. Let me play with gambling and women. They are not ordinary people. I can handle them normally. I bought a coin of 10 yen at the game center in the city to play sumo wrestling. What do you say? Our society has forced them to gambling and squeezing them into a special world for 100 or 200 years, and what should they do if they say that now?

Yeah. Do you live like a salaryman? I can't do it. It's a sumo wrestler wherever you go. What should I do? "

Mr. Izumi's Hiroshima dialect will be familiar to readers of "Seven Emperor Judoki" (serialized in "Monthly Secret"). Sometimes, after that story, the characters are asked what happens, but Mr. Izumi re-enters the medical school after graduating from the mathematics department of the Faculty of Science at Hokkaido University over five years. Currently, as a neurologist, he is engaged in clinical practice at a university hospital and is passionate about elucidating the intractable pathology of ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). He also runs a hospital and a long-term care facility in his hometown of Hiroshima, and is the head of the group with 500 employees.

However, Mr. Izumi's true face is the nineteenth chief priest of the Jodo Shinshu "Hosho-ji".

Mr. Izumi, who is also active as an entrepreneur, has a face as a "Tanimachi" who spares no money to the local world, and on the contrary, he is also in a position to receive donations from the Danka system as a priest of a temple. He deeply considers the meaning of the ephemeral floating world, sees the patient's death as a doctor, changes into a kasaya, and recites the sutra. I always look at every world in a well-balanced manner.

Izumi said.

"Have you heard of it? The story of Kitanoumi, who was active, quietly put 100,000 yen on a woman's bedside and left the room."

"Does that mean it's at the bedside of the woman who spent the night together?"

"That's right. The morning training is early, and I have to get up while the woman is still asleep. I don't know what he taught, but even with yokozuna, he was still a young man in his twenties at that time. Normally, can a child in his twenties notice such a smart thing? Teminsaiya. Taiho, the North Sea, Wajima, etc. It doesn't look like a face in your twenties. It's the style of an adult in your fifties or sixties. It's a story of the peculiarity of

"Certainly······"

"They don't treat them normally. It's special. I think that even a match-fixing in the extreme is forgiven. Where in the sumo wrestling is a serious match? When it's difficult for each other Lending and borrowing stars. Isn't it okay? Sumo is special. It's a culture. I want you to remain as the old sumo. It's true that accepting bad things as a daily routine. As a priest, what is right is wrong, and what is wrong is right. This sumo wrestling problem will be more important than the upper house election in the future fortune-telling of Japan. "

I was convinced by all the words of Mr. Izumi. It was exactly the same idea.

This time, I may be worried about issuing this sentence. That is, defending sumo wrestling at this time could be perceived as an antisocial statement by innocent people.

But just as Izumi is a religionist, I am a writer. Religious people and writers are, in a sense, a special profession that allows them to make statements that are not members of society. It is also an obligation to speak to the crisis of these wrestlers.

To me, it seems more dangerous for the people to look in exactly the same direction in the media coverage of the baseball gambling issue. The discourses of intellectuals and the comments of entertainers appearing on TV and newspapers may be comments that come from ignorance, but it is too dangerous for society to disperse only these words.

For example, in the comments made by these intellectuals and entertainers, there is a phrase, "Because sumo wrestling is a national sport." However, in fact, there is no history of sumo wrestling as a national sport by a national institution.

National sports set by national institutions include, for example, Taekwondo in South Korea, Rodeo in Chile, Kabaddi in Bangladesh, and ice hockey in Canada.

However, sumo wrestling is different.

When we use the term national sport, we sometimes refer to competitions set by the state, such as taekwondo, or simply to competitions that are deeply familiar to the country. Like American baseball, Japanese sumo wrestling is the latter with an ambiguous definition. At the Olympics once every four years, the media call it national sport judo. Isn't it ridiculous at all?

On April 19, this year, the Tokyo District Court said in a lawsuit in which Roho and Hakurozan, who were arrested for possessing cannabis, demanded that their dismissal be invalid and their status confirmed, saying that the disposition was too heavy compared to other sports. It is not appropriate to compare barrel sumo with other sports, "he dismissed using the phrase" national sport. " However, this is just a case law, and the country has not defined sumo as a national sport.

In addition, Makiko Uchidate said at the time of the Asashoryu problem.

"Ozumou has the spirit of sumo wrestling. I had to get angry like a demon because there are Asashoryu who ignored it and a master (Mr. Takasago, former Asasho) who did not take a stern attitude."

However, Mr. Uchidate does not know the meaning of the word sumo wrestling.

What is sumo wrestling that Mr. Uchidate says is, of course, the word "michi" in martial arts, that is, the word that Jigoro Kano used when changing the name from old-fashioned jujutsu to Kodokan judo, behind sumo. I just stuck them together and diverted them.

Kano first used the name "michi" as a CI (corporate identity) to differentiate himself from the old-fashioned jujutsu. It is no different from Ina Ceramics changing the company name to INAX to dispel the image of toilet bowl manufacturing, and Ocean Fisheries changing the company name to Maruha to erase the old name of fishing.

Of course, Kano gives a lot of meaning to this "road" in the large amount of print left. For example, the purpose of doing judo is to complete yourself and benefit the world.

However, Kano did not set up the Kodokan for these purposes from the beginning. As I wrote in the series by Masahiko Kimura, he had a warlike and fierce personality when he was young. Originally, he was worried that Ko-ryu Jiu-Jitsu would disappear, and he started the Kodokan with the idea that he should leave practical martial arts. The meaning was given after that.

Kano, who started a new Jiu-Jitsu school in his twenties, became in his thirties, forties, and fifties, and as he grew up with his disciples, he was sublimated as a word while he was worried and pondered. There are many words left. Shun Inoue (Professor of Konan Women's University, OB of Judo Club, Kyoto University) explained that the reason why Kodokan won by suppressing old-fashioned jujutsu was "the victory of discourse rather than the actual victory (against old-fashioned jujutsu)". "It was" ("The birth of martial arts"), and "(Kano) is also a" person of discourse "who continued to talk about judo without hesitation, and through his energetic speech activities, the samurai class no longer exists. We have succeeded in establishing the significance of judo in modern society ”(same as above).

In an era when there were few magazine media yet, Kano created a Kodokan magazine and energetically announced his thoughts. The concept of "road" was born from that.

I often talk to judo officials about this "road." The other person talks and I talk too. But that's good. This is because there is a love for judo at the core. We will talk about how to absorb the judo created by Jigoro Kano as a more fertile one and make use of it in our lives. This is because we know that even after the death of Kano Shihan, judo became bigger and deeper as the practitioners continued to discuss martial arts theory.

However, Mr. Uchidate's problem is that he has no love for sumo wrestling. It would be nice if Mr. Uchidate used the term sumo wrestling after understanding these histories, but I definitely don't know. Because many of her words for Asashoryu do not seem to have been issued according to the "road".

Given her position as a Yokozuna (at that time) and her influence on the media, she should have known that Asashoryu would be lynched by the public if she spoke. It is not a sumo wrestling theory or a housewife's well-end meeting that office workers show at a bar. It's not just Mr. Uchidate. The discourse of other intellectuals is too terrible.

Many of us Japanese used to farm and live in soil and mud. He entered the paddy field where he had sprinkled human dung with bare feet in a loincloth and was planting rice. Now, I push them against the wrestlers and let them fight barefoot on the soil, and if there is a problem, I blame them for being a national sport but a sumo wrestler. We walk on asphalt in leather shoes and high heels, live in concrete buildings free of dirt and mud, and push them against them.

The recent rapid increase in the number of foreign wrestlers in Makuuchi is largely due to the fact that no Japanese children are attracted to the sumo world and are no longer introductory. When I get up early in the morning, Japanese Brazilians are handing out newspapers, and when I go to a convenience store, Chinese women are hitting the cash register.

They are engaged in a "bad profession" on our behalf. The same is true for foreign wrestlers. I think we must not forget our gratitude because they have inherited the Japanese Shinto ritual on our behalf. Some may argue that "not everyone is asking for it." However, historically, sumo wrestling has evolved not only in the will of its own organization, but also in the direction intended by the emperors, generals, and the media (which can be translated into the wishes of the general public). I understand that.

Mr. Uchidate declared that "Asashoryu has no respect for Japan and the Kakukai," but these words do not give any respect to the wrestlers. I can say these words because I have no affection for sumo.

Let's unravel the history of sumo in order.

It begins with the tradition in "Kojiki" and "Nihon Shoki". The former is the battle between Takeminakata God and Takeminakata God, and the latter is the battle between Nomi no Sukune and Taima no Kehaya.

The fact that it appears in these books shows that sumo is a Shinto-based Shinto ritual.

There are still many dedication sumo wrestlings at festivals all over Japan, but originally, by dedicating sumo wrestling to God, we pray for abundance of five grains, and also have the two meanings of a jichinsai to calm the souls of the dead and prevent disasters. had.

The fact that the wrestlers step on the four legs means exactly this jichinsai. The etymology of the four-pronged is ugly (evil spirit), and the purpose is to calm the evil spirit in the ground by stepping on the ground with strong bragging power.

In the Nara period, Emperor Shomu held the first sumo wrestling in Tenpyo 6 (737). After that, it will be firmly incorporated into the Miyanaka event. In this way, sumo wrestling has a very close relationship with the imperial family because of its original origin.

In the Heian period, a sumo tournament was held regularly in July every year under the name of Sumo Festival. The royal family enjoyed the day watching this until sunset.

In the world of Kamakura, Minamoto no Yoritomo greatly encouraged sumo. The martial arts aspect of sumo has come to be reviewed. It seems that all the generals from generation to generation liked sumo.

During the Muromachi period, sumo wrestling was performed by the Ashikaga Shogunate, but in the history of sumo, it was called the Dark Ages, and it seems that sumo wrestling by the government was not very popular. However, it spreads all over the country as a dedication sumo.

In the Warring States period, sumo wrestling for actual battles became widespread, and Oda Nobunaga and others held sumo tournaments many times to greatly encourage this. It is written in "Nobunaga Hiroki" that in the 6th year of the Tensho era (1578), 300 strong men from Omi were gathered at Azuchi Castle to hold a tournament. At this time, the sources of sumo and old-fashioned jujutsu, such as group discussions and catchers, were not clearly differentiated. Although it is not well known, the blood of sumo is also flowing in the technique of old-fashioned jujutsu. Meanwhile, at the end of the Warring States period, a professional group specializing in sumo will be born.

In the Edo period, martial arts techniques began to flow in earnest from the Chinese continent, and they were mixed with group discussions, catchers, sumo, etc., and were also influenced by the ideas of old villas and Chinese medical techniques, and old-fashioned jujutsu was born. From here, sumo and jujutsu are technically clearly differentiated and begin to develop separately. In terms of ideology, sumo is a Shinto-based Shinto ritual, while Jiu-jitsu strongly draws on the Taoist thought.

In the early Edo period, Tsuji sumo became popular due to those who were out of the unforgettable system of the Warring States period, and it often developed into a quarrel of killing each other due to the traffic of people. For this reason, the Edo Shogunate issued a ban on Tsuji sumo wrestling, and together with the professional sumo wrestlers who had already appeared at the end of the Warring States period, made a kanjin sumo wrestling to serve as their saucer.

This is the mother of the current sumo wrestling.

The jurisdiction of Kanjin Sumo was the magistrate of temples and shrines.

When the temple and shrine magistrate's office gave permission, it was obliged to put up a sign with the words "Mengoku" at the entertainment venue. Even now, this signboard is always displayed at the entrance of the venue at the Grand Sumo Tournament, and it is also printed in ink on the numbering table, but these are remnants of that time. The professional sumo wrestling event thus began under the control of the Edo Shogunate.

At the beginning, the sumo wrestlers in Kyoto and Osaka were overwhelmingly strong, and the wrestlers in Edo were not the opponents. This is the same as any other culture. It is in the latter half of the 18th century that the strengths of Edo and Kamigata culture and sumo are switched. From the Edo Kanjin Sumo, Tanikaze, Onogawa, Raiden, and other Hanagata wrestlers were born one after another, entering the first golden age.

The Edo Shogunate officially recognized this Kanjin sumo as an entertainment for the common people at the beginning of the sumo wrestling by the 11th Shogun Iesai in the third year of Kansei (1791). It was greatly encouraged as an entertainment necessary to resolve the dissatisfaction of the common people with the Shogunate.

At first, it was held three times a year, but in the middle of the Edo period it was fixed to two times a year, and in the 7th year of Anei (1778), one place was decided to be 10 days. Senryu, who still remains, "a good man who lives in 20 days a year," was written in this era. It is a mockery of sumo wrestlers who can eat sumo wrestlers only for 20 days a year.

Sumo, Kabuki, and Yoshiwara were popular during the Edo period of Taihei Tenka. All of them become huge as a play of smart people. Many readers may have seen sumo nishiki-e around this time. Nishiki-e was like a celebrity bromide. As the flashy picture shows, it was the golden age of gorgeous sumo wrestling. The popularity of Hanazumō can be seen from the fact that female fans flooded in and showed a frenzy of throwing haori and obi.

However, this popularity disappears at once in the Meiji Restoration.

Progressive intellectuals and officials have said, "Abolish naked dance immediately." This is the same as the old-fashioned Jiu-Jitsu, which is categorized as barbaric and is also obsolete.

It was the emperor who saved the sumo at this time. At the time of the restoration, when Emperor Meiji moved from Kyoto to Tokyo, wrestlers held the Nishiki no mihata at the head of the procession. The Tokyo sumo wrestling, which was finally revived by the denunciation of the world, was triggered by the observatory sumo wrestling in 1884.

The Sino-Japanese War, which began in 1894, and the Russo-Japanese War, which began in 1904, brought on the spirit of Naotake, and the popularity of sumo recovered at once. I will do it. This is exactly the same as the spread of Kodokan Judo accelerated in these two wars.

Due to the explosive popularity of both yokozuna of Mt. Hitachi and the second generation Umegatani, the box office produced a surplus following the surplus, and in 1909, a permanent building was built in both countries. This permanent building, which was the first dome-shaped building in Japan designed by Tatsuno Kingo, was a huge building that could accommodate more than 10,000 people and was by far the most prestigious at that time.

Itagaki Taisuke tried to name this permanent building "Ryogoku Shobukan", but it was named Ryogoku Kokugikan from the idea that the writer Suiin Emi wrote in the opening guide that "Kakuriki is the national sport of Japan in the first place". rice field. The "mistake" that sumo is a national sport begins here.

The organization was also modified in line with these developments.

What was once called the Sumo Kaisho was incorporated into the Tokyo Sumo Association in 1899 and the Japan Sumo Association in 1925. .. When the Regent Palace Cup (now the Emperor's Gift Cup) was made from the incentives given at the time of the Showa Emperor's observatory, which was the Prince Regent, this foundation was given a victory cup from the Emperor to the box office by the one entertainer. It was a rush and fluttering because the word "how about giving it" came out. Incorporation didn't mean much.

The sumo wrestling boom reached its climax in 1927 when Osaka Kakuriki was absorbed by the Dainippon Sumo Association in Tokyo and unified, and the NHK radio broadcast in 1945 began. By the way, the first judo match to be played on NHK Radio was Tatsukuma Ushijima vs. Chikao Nogami (formerly Sixth Higher School OB) held at Kyoto Budo Center in 1958.

The time limit for the sumo wrestling was actually set at this radio broadcast, and until then there was no time limit. It was decided that it would be enough in Makuuchi because it would not be possible to organize a program without restrictions. Currently, it has been shortened to four minutes in the Makuuchi area in line with the television broadcast that began in 1935.

In this way, the history of sumo wrestling has always been swayed by the speculation of the Emperor and Shogunate, as well as by the media such as radio and television.

After the war, while judo and kendo were banned by GHQ, sumo wrestling continued, and the Tochiwaka era in the early 30's of the Showa era, the Kashiwa Peng era from the latter half of the 30's of the Showa era, and the Waiko era that began in the latter half of the 40's of the Showa era. , After the Chiyonofuji era from the latter half of the Showa 50's and the Wakaki boom since the beginning of Heisei, it continues to the present day.

As I wrote earlier, we Japanese once prayed for a good harvest, or held a dedication sumo wrestling at a festival to calm the anger of the evil spirits sleeping in the ground, and carried a portable shrine in a happy appearance. ..

The day of the festival was an extraordinary space that was not everyday.

Kunio Yanagita, a folklore scholar, categorized this extraordinary time and space as "Hare" and the daily time and space as "Ke". Halle is a sunny stage, a special day in your life, not only a festival but also a wedding ceremony, a genpuku ceremony, and a new year.

I put rice cakes on the hare, cooked red rice, ate fish with a tail, and drank expensive sake that I couldn't usually drink. There was a different rule on Halle's day than on Ke. At the festival, men beat each other, and in some regions, night crawling was allowed only that night. He was not accused of behaving violently when he was beaten, and was not considered a shameful act when he crawled at night.

Sumo wrestlers spend every day as a day of hare.

Life itself is a festival.

People in the world always wear yukata, which they wear only on fair days, and they practice in the morning in loincloth, eat chanko, and go to bed immediately. And when it comes to this place, the hips are exposed to the TV screen, they hit each other from the head, the faces are stuck together, the mawashi is attracted to each other, and they roll on the ring and become covered with soil. Furthermore, the head is tied to the mage that should have disappeared due to the haircut and sword removal order of 1871.

We must not judge these wrestlers according to the same rules as we ordinary people who live in the world, and we cannot use the same scale (ruler) as a ruler based on our daily customs. Again, we must be grateful that we have them carry out all the Shinto rituals and old customs.

Rather, they must be protected. If the sumo wrestling is a Shinto ritual or a national sport, or if an outsider blames you, you can really make it a national sport and carry it out as a Shinto ritual. It is not a special foundation under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology as it is now, but to put it in the extreme, it may be a feeling that they are given a special position to the wrestlers as an organization under the direct control of the Imperial Household Agency and are protected by the people.

As a special zone, the law firmly stipulates "national sport", a sumo wrestler is appointed, and under their guidance, why is sumo wrestling necessary, what is the social meaning, and how far can it be done in private life? I have to explain to my parents and wrestlers where I can't go until I'm satisfied.

If you don't proceed on that basis, you won't understand the fundamental meaning of why people like them who have grown up in the sumo world since childhood are making noise. The teacher just followed what the brothers had done. Foreign wrestlers don't know more because they don't know Japanese wrestlers.

Gambling should be completely prohibited. Only Hanafuda inside the sumo world should be tolerated. Some indicators must be properly documented and explained. Sumo wrestlers should be protected in a different worldview, just as the imperial family has a different worldview and different times are flowing.

After completing these procedures, the intellectuals should just say, "Because it is a national sport." If I get angry, then I think I'm angry.

I have met wrestlers many times.

They are not just big. There are many big people in the judo world. However, something is different from their sumo wrestlers. It would be a scented sensuality with the scent of sardine oil. Only those who live in the world of Halle can have it, which we ordinary people who live in Ke do not have.