VOX POPULI: Delayed sumo broadcasts not next best thing

Watching a golf tournament on television, I sometimes notice that the sun is higher in the sky than it is outside my window. Even though it may be getting dark, shadows are still clearly falling on the fairways and greens.

This means it is a delayed broadcast, aired one to two hours later, after being edited to squeeze the action into a limited time slot.

By the time the scene of "the fateful last hole" is shown, the winner must already be celebrating their victory over a drink. I have heard that television stations often ask newspapers not to publish the results on their websites as news flashes for fear it could hurt their viewer ratings.

As far as sports programs are concerned, live broadcasts are essential. Except for passionate fans, nothing is more boring than watching games for which the results are known.

Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) announced its decision Tuesday not to air the Nagoya Grand Sumo Tournament starting Sunday. Apparently, as a public broadcaster that receives subscription fees from viewers, it means to draw a clear line against illegal betting on baseball games and other scandals that have rocked the sumo world.

Meanwhile, sumo fans who have paid their subscriptions will be deprived of the chance to watch the bouts live. Instead, NHK plans to show video recordings of bouts of the makuuchi division one to two hours later. For fans who are cheering for particular wrestlers, I think the program will serve more as an occasion to confirm their fighting techniques rather than the outcome of bouts.

At any rate, by the time we see the bouts on television, the wrestlers will have already finished taking their baths. The sensation and excitement of the real bouts will have been lost.

Television broadcasts of sumo started in 1953. At the time, some sumo officials voiced concern that if sumo was shown on television, fewer people would come to watch the tournaments. But as it turned out, the timing coincided with the advancement of Tochinishiki and Wakanohana, who would later become yokozuna to build the Tochi-Waka era, and the Kokugikan Sumo Arena was packed with sumo fans while people at home were glued to their televisions.

Even with a large number of wrestlers absent from the Nagoya tournament as punishment, some points of interest, such as yokozuna Hakuho's winning streak, remain.

But with no live broadcasts for 15 days, the medium most responsible for the sport's popularity for more than half a century stands to alienate a large number of viewers. If the Japan Sumo Association does not engage in serious soul-searching, NHK's protest in banning broadcasts will make no one happy.

--The Asahi Shimbun, July 7

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.