EDITORIAL: NHK's decision on sumo

For the first time since Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) began televising sumo tournaments five decades ago, the public broadcaster said Tuesday it will forgo live coverage of the Nagoya Grand Sumo Tournament scheduled to start Sunday.

Billed as a national sport, sumo has been shown live all these years on NHK's nationwide network as a matter of course, generating quite a large following. But now that the sport has become deeply mired in scandals--the latest of which concerns illegal betting on pro baseball games--we support NHK's decision to drop the upcoming Nagoya tournament from its live programming.

If the sport is to be reborn and truly reformed, sumo authorities should accept this harsh decision as what they deserve.

NHK pays a broadcasting rights fee to the Japan Sumo Association to show live sumo bouts. The amount reportedly exceeds 2.5 billion yen ($28.4 million) a year, which forms a fair chunk of the association's annual revenues estimated at around 10 billion yen.

The fee actually comes from NHK's paying subscribers. It is upsetting to think that some of that money, paid as salaries to sumo wrestlers, was being gambled away to effectively support organized crime.

Given the suspected involvement of crime syndicates in the betting scandal, it must have been more important for NHK to consider its status as a public broadcaster than to accommodate the wishes of sumo fans looking forward to watching the Nagoya tournament on TV.

But the betting scandal is not the only problem. During last year's Nagoya tournament, individuals affiliated with the underworld were sitting in premium ringside seats in full view of the TV cameras.

And during the January tournament this year, gangsters were again seen on TV occupying similar seats. Two stablemasters were later found to have made arrangements for the tickets, enabling the gangsters to show their faces to their bosses who were watching sumo from behind bars. In effect, NHK was unwittingly taken advantage of.

Of about 13,000 people who sent comments to NHK, 68 percent were against sumo coverage and only 13 percent were in favor, according to the broadcaster. Its decision Tuesday also reflects this severe public opinion.

But for the sake of die-hard sumo fans, NHK reportedly plans to show a condensed version of pre-recorded matches every evening.

The broadcaster will negotiate with the sumo association in due time on what to do about the broadcasting rights fee for the Nagoya tournament.

But so long as the sumo community proves incapable of severing its ties with organized crime, NHK would be wrong to continue paying the fees to the association. Should the association insist on being paid, then NHK should not even show the condensed version. In fact, there should be no sumo coverage at all until the sumo community is truly reformed.

At a news conference Tuesday, a stern-faced NHK President Shigeo Fukuchi noted, "The sumo association must recognize that the sport is undergoing a crisis of a century, and that it must begin reforming itself at once."

The all-too-familiar scene in a typical Japanese home--the smells and sounds of supper being prepared and the TV set in the living room showing sumo--will disappear this summer.

Whether the disappearance will be temporary or permanent depends on the sumo community's resolve to right itself.

--The Asahi Shimbun, July 7