Sumo Rings Poem by gershon hepner

Sumo rings are no-go places
for women who love men who’re fat,
regarding thin men as disgraces.
If I, too, were a big fat cat,
I wouldn’t be inclined to wrestle
with any horny mother’s daughter,
I’d rather show to her my pestle,
and hope she’d put it in her mortar.
I wouldn’t do this for Japan,
for California is my home,
where I’m a bookish kind of man
who’s neither athlete nor cockscomb.
I’d do it proudly for LA
where women, once they’re off the freeways,
will eye, preparing for foreplay,
their lover, guessing how much he weighs,
but only to determine whether,
once he’s exhibitionary,
he’ll seem to weigh less than a feather,
upon his elbows, missionary.
Just like Japan, LA has got
traditions that are hard to change,
and when a woman’s really hot
she’ll choose positions that are strange,
and this is fine for me, since I
am flexible, and not yet fat,
though some which they have made me try
make me a sumo acrobat.

Norimitsu Onishi writes about a crisis in Sumo wrestling in Japan (“Japan Wrings Its Hands Over Latest Sumo Woes, ” NYT, October 19,2007) :
The problems swirling through Japan’s ancient sport of sumo recently would seem to be random, unconnected events. A coach was expelled from the sumo association this month for inflicting fatal injuries on a 17-year-old apprentice in a hazing incident and may face criminal charges. One of the two grand champions, Asashoryu, has been suspended for claiming an injury and then being filmed playing soccer in his native Mongolia. He is also suspected of fixing matches with other wrestlers, including the other grand champion, also Mongolian.When things seemingly could not get any worse, a woman tried to climb up into the elevated sumo ring last month during a match, a no-go place for women, who are considered impure in sumo tradition. She broke free from a female security guard in the audience but was pulled down by a sumo wrestler who prevented her from entering the sacred ring and, in the eyes of traditionalists, defiling it….
“Sumo has latched on to a certain image of what Japan is — that Japan has this long tradition as a country and those things that are 1,000,1,500 or 2,000 years old are still alive today, ” Mr. Thompson said. “That’s why this appeal to tradition trumps a lot of other issues, in this case what might even turn out to be manslaughter, ” he added. So if sumo has always changed to fit the needs of the times, how can it do so now? Some have proposed raising the age of recruits or picking the best from college sumo clubs. Noriki Miyashita, a retired wrestler, favors turning sumo into an international professional league with Japan serving as “the major league.” “When it comes to tradition, there invariably comes a time to re-examine things, ” he said. “And I think the time has now come for the world of sumo.”

10/19/07