TV Timer: In the sumo world, beatings common to toughen up newcomers

The Asahi Shimbun
February 13, 2008
Source: http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200802130056.html

The scandal over the death of a novice sumo wrestler and the arrests of his former stablemaster and three apprentices has been called unprecedented in the country's national sport.

The beating that apparently led to the death of Takashi Saito, then 17, was described in detail on the wide shows. Unfortunately, many say this is not an isolated incident. In fact, the Tokitsukaze stable where the assault occurred was known for its "at home" atmosphere, said Yorimasa Takeda, a sumo journalist.

Although Saito died of shock in June last year, it took seven months for Aichi police to arrest Junichi Yamamoto, the former stablemaster, and the three wrestlers. Police did not conduct an autopsy, believing no foul play occurred despite scars and bruises on Saito's body.

Saito's father, Masato, said he had previously doubted that anyone would be held criminally responsible for his son's death.

"I really feared that the Japan Sumo Association is so formidable that police may end up doing nothing over the death of a novice wrestler like my son," he said.

Former wrestlers and journalists covering sumo agreed that incessant assaults on newcomers under the name of toughening up and training have been pervasive in the sport and need to be addressed urgently.

One former wrestler, who received cigarette burns on his chest while he was active, saw photos of Saito's corpse and said he was not surprised by the injuries.

"There must be many other wrestlers on the active list who are even now badly beaten up like Saito," he said. "His case garnered attention because he happened to die."

Takeda, who broke Saito's case in a weekly magazine last summer, said the "at home" Tokitsukaze stable is only one of 53 stables in Japan.

People who know Yamamoto have said his personality changes when he is drunk. But Takeda said Yamamoto's drunken behavior is not noticeably worse than those of other stablemasters.

"That illustrates the point that violence is deeply embedded in the sumo world," Takeda said.

A stablemaster could stop excessive violence because he is meant to be an absolute figure for junior wrestlers, according to former wrestlers. "If he calls something white black, it is meant to be black to the wrestlers," said one former wrestler, describing the enormous clout a stablemaster carries.

Sumo wrestler beaten at least 8 times before death

The Mainichi Shimbun
February 9, 2008
Source: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080209p2a00m0sp011000c.html

NAGOYA -- Police investigating the death of 17-year-old sumo wrestler Takashi Saito have found that he was violently attacked at least eight times during two days of beatings at the Tokitsukaze sumo stable.

Details on the attacks on Saito, who wrestled under the name Tokitaizan, emerged Saturday following the arrests of a former sumo stablemaster and three other wrestlers accused of beating Saito to death.

Investigators said that Saito fled from his lodgings in Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture, at about 11 a.m. on June 25 last year. At about noon that day, wrestlers Yuichiro Izuka, 25, and Masakazu Kimura, 24, now both under arrest, spotted Saito and dragged him back. The pair allegedly slapped the young wrestler, then teamed up with two others and attacked Saito, beating him with a stick.

At about 8 p.m. that evening, Saito was made to sit on his heels in a formal position next to former stablemaster Junichi Yamamoto, who is also now under arrest. When Saito moved his legs, Izuka and Kimura allegedly slapped him, and at about 8:30 p.m., Yamamoto also hit the 17-year-old in the face with a beer bottle, investigators said.

Afterwards, Yamamoto reportedly told the other wrestlers: "You go ahead and teach him too."

Police said three wrestlers including another suspect, Masanori Fujii, 22, took Saito to a training area and tied him to a practice post, and then beat him with a stick and their bare hands for about 15 minutes. They temporarily took Yamamoto to a hall, but Kimura and other wrestlers beat him outside again for about 15 minutes.

The beatings reportedly lasted until 10 p.m. that day. During this time Yamamoto was reportedly drinking alcohol, aware of the beatings.

From about 7:30 a.m. the following day Yamamoto allegedly hit Saito with a wooden pole. Other wrestlers also allegedly hit him with poles. Sparring bouts held as training began at 11 a.m. About half an hour later Saito collapsed, and he later died.

（Mainichi Japan） February 9, 2008

Sacked sumo stablemaster, 3 wrestlers called in for questioning over grappler's death

The Mainichi Shimbun
February 7, 2008
Source: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080207p2a00m0na025000c.html

NAGOYA -- Police asked a sacked sumo stablemaster and three wrestlers on Thursday to submit themselves for questioning over the death of a junior wrestler after they assaulted him, investigators said.

Aichi Prefectural Police are set to serve arrest warrants accusing former stablemaster Tokitsukaze, whose real name is Junichi Yamamoto, and three wrestlers belonging to the Tokitsukaze stable, of inflicting bodily injury resulting in death.

Prefectural police have concluded that the victim, 17-year-old Takashi Saito, died as a result of being assaulted by 57-year-old Yamamoto and the three senior wrestlers on June 25 and 26 last year as punishment for escaping from the stable. Saito went by the sumo professional name of Tokitaizan.

（Mainichi Japan） February 7, 2008

Ex-stablemaster to be arrested over death

The Yomiuri Shimbun
January 26, 2008
Source: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20080126TDY01304.htm

NAGOYA--The Aichi prefectural police have decided to arrest the former stablemaster Tokitsukaze and three sumo wrestlers by early next month, after concluding that their beatings and assaults over two days on a 17-year-old junior wrestler led to his death in June, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

Tokitsukaze stable wrestler Tokitaizan, whose real name was Takashi Saito, died after collapsing following a training session on June 26 in Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture.

The former stablemaster's real name is Junichi Yamamoto.

Initially, the Inuyama Police Station determined his death was caused by disease. However, after Saito's parents requested that an autopsy be conducted, it was learned that his death was caused by traumatic shock as a consequence of multiple external wounds. The prefectural police are investigating the case on suspicion that his death was caused by the beatings.

The ensuing police investigation revealed that the assaults on Saito began early in the afternoon of June 25. Besides the three senior wrestlers, the police will soon consult with prosecutors about sending papers on four or five other wrestlers who joined in the beatings.

During dinner on June 25, Saito was believed to have been struck on his forehead with a beer bottle by the former stablemaster at the stable house in Inuyama. This was believed to have been followed by an apparent group hazing by senior wrestlers who severely beat Saito. Saito died after training the following day.

Saito, who was fed up with his severe training regimen, tried to flee the stable house on the morning of June 25. But he was caught by senior wrestlers at a convenience store about 700 meters away in Inu-yama.

Saito was taken back to the stable house and was apparently assaulted until dinnertime.

On June 26, during a training session incorporating butsukarigeiko, in which a wrestler pushes an inert counterpart across the sumo ring and is then thrown to the ground, some senior wrestlers beat Saito with metal baseball bats.

However, the prefectural police decided to establish their case as one based upon a series of assaults, due to the difficulty of proving precisely which action constituted the fatal blow.

The former stablemaster ordered Saito to sit in a kneeling position during the dinner on June 25 and beat the young wrestler with a beer bottle on the forehead while scolding him, then allegedly instructed the senior wrestlers to perpetrate further violence. Several senior wrestlers have told investigators they acted on the stablemaster's instruction.

Therefore, the prefectural police judged it possible to establish the case as one of inflicting bodily injuries resulting in death.

Meanwhile, Nagoya University, which has been examining tissue from Saito's body, detected a high level of potassium in the junior wrestler's blood--indications that are consistent with a body being severely bruised--to a degree that would lead to cardiac arrest.

(Jan. 26, 2008)

L.A. Times criticizes Japan over sumo wrestler's death

Tatsuhito Iida / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent
The Yomiuri Shimbun
November 11, 2007
Source: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/world/20071111TDY03103.htm

LOS ANGELES--Friday's issue of the Los Angeles Times carried a story harshly criticizing Japanese police over the recent case of a 17-year-old sumo wrestler who died after being beaten by his stablemaster and his stablemates, claiming that police are too reluctant to conduct judicial autopsies.

The article said: "Photos of the dead teenager's corpse show a deep cut on his right arm, horrific bruising...and his legs are pocked with small burns the size of a lit cigarette...The cause of death was 'heart disease,' police declared."

Referring to the decision by Aichi prefectural police not to conduct an autopsy and instead conclude that the wrestler, Takashi Saito, of the Tokitsukaze stable, had died of a health condition, the front-page article said Japanese police "try to avoid adding murders to their case load unless the identity of the killer is obvious."

As reasons for the low rate of implementing autopsies, the article quoted Japanese sources as saying, "Police discourage autopsies that might reveal a higher murder rate in their jurisdiction and pressure doctors to attribute unnatural deaths to health reasons, usually heart failure," and, "There is also a cultural resistance in Japan to handling the dead, with families often reluctant to insist upon a procedure that invades the body of a loved one."

The article concluded that though Japan's autopsy system was introduced by the United States just after the end of World War II, it is not functioning sufficiently.

(Nov. 11, 2007)

Japan’s police see no evil

The boy had been badly beaten but his death was ruled natural. The case was closed in an official culture that discourages autopsies.

COLUMN ONE
By Bruce Wallace Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times
November 9, 2007
Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-autopsy9nov09,1,5774455.story?coll=la-headlines-world

Courtesy of Jon Lenvik

TOKYO — Photos of the teenager’s corpse show a deep cut on his right arm, horrific bruising on his neck and chest. His face is swollen and covered with cuts. A silhouette of violence runs from the corner of his left eye over the cheekbone to his jaw, and his legs are pocked with small burns the size of a lighted cigarette.

But police in Japan’s Aichi prefecture saw something else when they looked at the body of Takashi Saito, a 17-year-old sumo wrestler who arrived at a hospital in June. The cause of death was “heart disease,” police declared.

As is common in Japan, Aichi police reached their verdict on how Saito died without an autopsy. No need for a coroner, they said. No crime involved. Only 6.3% of the unnatural deaths in Aichi are investigated by a medical examiner, a minuscule rate even by nationwide standards in Japan, where an autopsy is performed in 11.2% of cases.

Forensic scientists say there are many reasons for the low rate, including inadequate budgets and a desperate shortage of pathologists outside the biggest urban areas. There is also a cultural resistance in Japan to handling the dead, with families often reluctant to insist upon a procedure that invades the body of a loved one.

But Saito’s case has given credence to complaints by a group of frustrated doctors, former pathologists and ex-cops who argue that Japan’s police culture is the main obstacle.

Police discourage autopsies that might reveal a higher homicide rate in their jurisdiction, and pressure doctors to attribute unnatural deaths to health reasons, usually heart failure, the group alleges. Odds are, it says, that people are getting away with murder in Japan, a country that officially claims one of the lowest per capita homicide rates in the world.

“You can commit a perfect murder in Japan because the body is not likely to be examined,” says Hiromasa Saikawa, a former member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police security and intelligence division. He says senior police officers are “obsessed with statistics because that’s how you get promotions,” and strive to reduce the number of criminal cases as much as possible to keep their almost perfect solution rate.

Japan’s annual police report says its officers made arrests in 96.6% of the country’s 1,392 homicides in 2005.

But Saikawa, who says he became disillusioned by “fishy” police practices and in 1997 left the force in disgust after 30 years, claims that police try to avoid adding homicides to their caseload unless the identity of the killer is obvious.

“All the police care about is how they look to people; it’s all PR to show that their capabilities are high,” Saikawa says. “Without autopsies they can keep their percentage [of solved cases] high. It’s all about numbers.”

The former policeman has written a memoir of his time on the force. Called “Policeman at the Scene,” it describes a police culture that has chipped away at the effectiveness of an autopsy system created during the U.S. occupation after World War II.

“The police textbooks taught us not to trust doctors,” he says, adding that police officers indirectly pressure doctors to sign death certificates without an autopsy. “Doctors are afraid of the police. They are afraid of retaliation. They worry the police could prosecute them for malpractice. So they are easily pressured.

“There is no one refereeing the police,” Saikawa says. “It’s scary.”

After the war, Americans created a medical examiner’s office for Tokyo after learning that thousands of deaths in the postwar rubble were being ascribed to starvation without any forensic examination. It was soon discovered that a tuberculosis epidemic was the main culprit.

The system was soon expanded to six other big cities which, for the most part, are the jurisdictions where autopsies are done with the most frequency (in 2004, autopsies were conducted in 29% of Kanagawa prefecture’s unnatural deaths; 18% of those in Tokyo). But much of the country remains without a fully functioning medical examiner system.

“There aren’t many doctors who want to do this kind of work and that means some areas don’t have a medical examiner at all,” says Dr. Masahiko Ueno, a former chief medical examiner in Tokyo who spent 30 years in the coroner’s office until he retired in 1988. Since then he has written more than 30 books about the cases that animated his career and the cold cases that intrigue him in retirement.

Ueno says his experience leaves him convinced that many homicides are being missed and he, too, blames a system that gives police great discretion over when an autopsy is performed. Although doctors are legally required to report “unnatural deaths” to police, the country’s medical act does not precisely define what that is.

The philosophical approach to death investigations differs between the West and Japan.

In the West, autopsies are performed to determine the cause of death. That is one reason the autopsy rate for people who die in hospitals has fallen in most Western countries: Improved medical diagnostics has removed much of the uncertainty about why a patient died.

But in Japan, investigations are not as concerned with uncovering the cause of death as with whether a crime has been committed. Without obvious signs of homicide, police are less likely to ask for an autopsy.

That applies to investigations of apparent suicides.

Japan has one of the world’s highest suicide rates, accounting for more than 30,000 deaths a year, but police request “almost no autopsies on suicides,” which could determine whether the cause of death is what it appears, Saikawa says.

Many police examinations of the body are cursory, he alleges, sometimes nothing more sophisticated than a visual examination.

Take the case in January 2006, when financial advisor Hideaki Noguchi was found dead in an Okinawa hotel with knife wounds. Noguchi was a close associate of Takafumi Horie, the brash founder of the Internet company Livedoor, which had just been the target of a nationally televised police raid and seen most of its multibillion-dollar value evaporate.

But despite being a central figure in a sensational criminal investigation and privy to Livedoor secrets, police declared Noguchi’s death a suicide. They did not ask for an autopsy, and the body was cremated.

Or take the suicide in April of Agriculture Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka, who was found hanged in his Tokyo apartment. Matsuoka was embroiled in a scandal involving the misappropriation of political funds that suggested a broad system of organized influence peddling. Even though Matsuoka’s troubles were destabilizing the government and his death occurred just hours before his scheduled appearance to answer questions before a parliamentary committee, no autopsy was conducted to ensure that he had not died from something other than hanging.

A day later, Shinichi Yamazaki, a businessman implicated in the same scandal, plunged to his death in a parking lot outside his Yokohama apartment. No autopsy was conducted in that case either.

“The police said it was suicide,” says an incredulous Saikawa, “because he had left his shoes placed neatly together on the balcony.”

Japan’s forensic specialists have long been calling for an overhaul of the coroner system, but it took the death of the young sumo wrestler to finally bring the shortcomings under sharper scrutiny.

Doctors at the hospital where Saito was brought in, unconscious and battered, have since acknowledged that they had doubts about the police verdict. They said they initially attributed his death to acute cardiac failure, which occurs when the heart stops suddenly and does not rule out foul play.

But the police insisted otherwise. So the hospital signed a death certificate that blamed a diseased heart for killing the 17-year-old. It released the body to Junichi Yamamoto, the master of the training facility where Saito lived and had collapsed after what was described as a “strenuous” practice session. No need to pick up the body, the boy’s grieving family claims Yamamoto told them by phone. We’re having him cremated.

Had Saito’s parents not demanded to see their son’s body, the truth about the wrestler’s death might never have been known.

But when the body was returned home in another prefecture, they were shocked by its battered state. The family asked medical professors at Niigata University to perform an autopsy, which revealed that Saito’s heart stopped from the shock of injuries inflicted upon him. He probably had been beaten to death.

On this wisp of suspicion rested justice for a dead boy.

More than a month later, under pressure from the family and Japan’s muckraking weekly magazines, Aichi police opened an investigation that found the stable master and other wrestlers had viciously beaten Saito. It was punishment, they said, because he was trying to quit sumo. The stable master has admitted hitting Saito in the forehead with a beer bottle the night before he died.

Leaks to the media from the police investigation indicated that the boy was beaten again the next morning, punched, kicked and hit with a baseball bat by other wrestlers while Yamamoto watched.

Under fire from an appalled public, the Japanese Sumo Assn. last month finally acted and banned Yamamoto from the sport. Aichi police did not respond to questions about the investigation, or the agency’s policies and practices on requesting autopsies.

They have yet to file charges.

————————-

bruce.wallace@latimes.com

Naoko Nishiwaki and Hisako Ueno of the Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.

See also DEBITO.ORG for further commentary on this story;

http://www.debito.org/index.php/?p=713

SUMO SCRIBBLINGS

Who killed Takashi Saito?

By MARK BUCKTON -- Special to The Japan Times Online
The Japan Times
Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007
Source: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ss20071018mb.html

That any life should be lost during sport is tragic, and sumo is no exception.

Had Takashi Saito decided not to enter the world of professional sumo, he probably would still be alive today. Instead, in late June, after a particularly brutal period of butsukari-geiko (a training routine in which a senior, and usually heavier, opponent is pushed across the ring), apparently coupled with physical abuse from his elders, Saito collapsed. He was taken to a hospital where he died a few hours later. A member of Tokitsukaze Beya, one of sumo's more prestigious heya in terms of history and sekitori output, he was known as Tokitaizan.

At least one police investigation is underway yet no concrete conclusions on accountability can be drawn from comments to date, bar the fact that Saito was physically (and probably mentally) abused. Undoubtedly maltreated, he died having endured the unendurable, all the time while under the supposed care of experienced stable master Tokitsukaze Oyakata.

Futatsuryu, as the 57-year-old Tokitsukaze was known in his active days, has now been removed from his post and relieved of his duties in the Nihon Sumo Kyokai. He was replaced by former maegashira Tokitsuumi last week and is now destined to live out his days haunted by Tokitaizan's premature passing at age 17. Whether he lives out those days as a free man will be decided in the coming weeks, as he is still legally innocent and the police have not yet detained the former komusubi.

Articles damning sumo as a sport have subsequently appeared in a number of the world's more prominent media outlets — and more than a few have been a bit off the mark. A piece on The Times of London's Web site, for example, erroneously described butsukari-geiko as "a bone-crunching process in which young sumo are repeatedly charged into by their peers."

Domestically, many publications have already joined the lynch mob as well. The question we must ask, though, is: Should sumo in its entirety be held responsible for Takashi Saito's death?

Wasn't sumo the cause for celebration in years past when strong yokozuna or never-say-die ozeki captured the imagination of a nation? Did anyone gripe about the physicality of training back in the day? Wasn't it the spirit of gamman (endurance), so respected in rikishi such as yokozuna Taiho, Hawaiian sekiwake Takamiyama, the elder (ozeki) Takanohana and so many others in more recent times, that helped boost Japan from a nation devastated by war to a financial superpower in less than half a century?

One fact that must be considered is that sumo is a sport bred of a culture. It is that culture — one based for so long on obedience to seniority, unquestioned loyalty to those a rung higher — that must shoulder part of the blame for this boy's death.

Obviously, the critics of sumo are condemning the sport as a whole because of one man's inability to maintain discipline in his own fold. However, should the shame of one stable extend to the other 52 and the 700 men in them? Wouldn't time be better spent reflecting on a collective inability in recent decades to put a stop to physical and mental abuse in classrooms, the workplace and in sporting teams up and down the country?

If anything positive can come of Takashi Saito's death, it will be the reluctance of would-be bullies in sumo to act upon their desires. At this moment in time, self-administered reform is the best that could be hoped for from the ancient and still largely sealed world of sumo.

As for the former Tokitsukaze Oyakata (or Junichi Yamamoto, as he is now being called) I believe he is guilty in some way, shape or form as relates to the death of young Takashi, but that is my personal opinion. He deserves his day in court and will likely have it. Tokitsukaze's own comments, which now include him confessing that his beer bottle made contact with Takashi's head, appear to have sealed his fate, as have those of current and retired Tokitsukaze Beya rikishi, who have now told police they were acting under instructions. Any eventual penalty, however, is one for the judicial system to decide.

The Japan Times
(C) All rights reserved

Boy wrestler’s death exposes sumo ‘cruelty’

Leo Lewis in Tokyo
The Times (UK)
September 28, 2007
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2545474.ece

The death of a teenage sumo trainee, who was beaten savagely by his stable-master and bullied mercilessly by older wrestlers, has thrown open the secretive world of the national sport of Japan and horrified its fans.

Match-fixing allegations and other scandals that have arisen this year have already dented sumo’s image as a sport of noble traditions and samurai honour.

Yesterday’s tearful public appearance by the father of the dead boy is likely to destroy the dignified image of sumo for ever. The death of 17-year-old Takashi Saito has exposed it as a murky domain where bullying is rife and violence is part of daily life.

Masato Saito begged the sport’s authorities to end their cover-up of his son’s sudden death. Weeping, he demanded that the Sumo Association tell the truth and take steps to prevent a repeat of the abuse that cost the life of Takashi.

In what would be the first arrest of a sumo stable-master, police sources said that they were likely to charge Junichi Yamamoto in the next few days with causing the death of his teenage jonokuchi – the most junior rank of wrestler.

The life of aspiring young sumo wrestlers is notoriously tough, but until yesterday it was always assumed that the stable-masters had the best interests of their wrestlers at heart and knew where to draw the line.

As details of Takashi’s death have trickled out – officially he died from heart failure in June while preparing for a tournament – a grim reality has emerged. Hit repeatedly on the head with a beer bottle by his instructor, kicked by his fellow students and later pummelled with a metal baseball bat, Takashi’s short career in sumo has been exposed as a daily ordeal.

He ran away twice from the stable but was forced back into the fold by older wrestlers. As punishment for his desertion, his mobile phone was smashed to bits to deny him any contact with his family and the outside world. In a move that Mr Saito now regrets bitterly, he told his son to stick it out rather than quit.

On the day before his death Takashi was forced to endure an ordeal that coroners at Niigata University believe may have led to his death.

As part of their training regime, wrestlers are put through regular sessions of butsukari geiko – a bone-crunching process in which young sumo are repeatedly charged into by their peers to prepare them for the violence in a match.

Butsukari geiko is so fierce that wrestlers are limited to only three or four minutes. On the day before he died Takashi was exposed to 30 minutes of battery by bigger, stronger wrestlers.

The aftermath of his death has revealed increasingly desperate attempts by the stable-master to cover up what went on at his school.

Initially, Mr Yamamoto denied that there had been any violence involved in the boy’s death. Then Takashi’s parents became suspicious when the stable-master offered to pay for a quick cremation of their son. When the body was returned to them covered in bruises and scars, they demanded the postmortem examination that revealed what had happened.

The scandal comes as sumo is trying desperately to win back the support of ordinary Japanese – fans who have recoiled in horror at a series of match-fixing allegations and the perceived ill-treatment of its Mongolian grand champion, Asashoryu, who is now receiving medical treatment for a stress-related disorder.