2023-07-31 17:14:45
A world “shrouded in mystery”. It is in these terms that the former sumo wrestler, Daisuke Yanagihara, suing the authorities of this Japanese sport testified Monday of the violence and ill-treatment he claims to have suffered, in order to encourage other people to speak.
Daisuke Yanagihara, 25, says he told his master in early January 2021 of his reluctance to participate in a tournament, when a state of emergency had just been put in place in greater Tokyo against Covid-19. Fighting under the name Kotokantetsu, he feared the health consequences of a possible heart operation he had undergone a few years earlier, but his master and the Japan Sumo Association (AJS) did not left him, in his opinion, only two options: to participate in the tournament or to retire from the sport. “I was desperate,” Daisuke Yanagihara recalled Monday at a press conference in Tokyo, where his lawyers recalled the death of a Covid wrestler in May 2020.
“Forced to eat meat covered in green mold”
Explaining that he joined the sumo world at the age of 15 to ease the burden of his mother who was raising him alone, he then felt he had “no other choice” but to leave it, so as not to ” cause him inconvenience and concern” if he were to be hospitalized again.
Daisuke Yanagihara filed a civil lawsuit last March against the AJS and its former master, from whom he is claiming some 4.1 million yen (26,000 euros) in damages for the damage suffered.
The former wrestler says he also wants to denounce the mistreatment he claims to have suffered in nearly eight years in the world of sumo, where low-ranking wrestlers were notably, according to him, “regularly forced to eat meat covered in green mold “, including a batch that expired five years ago.
He also denounces the fines inflicted by the master on the wrestlers or the physical violence and bullying received during the training of his elders: “Making minors eat rotten meat or rice, make them eat dirt and salt in training (…) are anti-social acts,” he said. “By sharing my experience, I want to reveal the state of this world which under the pretext of traditional culture is shrouded in mystery”, and encourage other wrestlers to speak up, he explained.
The sumo world has been tarnished by multiple violence scandals. In 2009, a former master was sentenced to six years in prison for encouraging three of his recruits to beat up a 17-year-old apprentice, who had died of his injuries.
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