Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 574, The Kings of the Ring, Part 1.

So when I was debating the idea of a sort of historicized biography, I quickly narrowed down my

list of potential topics to a few suspects. Miyazaki Manabu was, of course, the one I ultimately picked, largely because of how

well documented his life is and because of the insane things he got up to. But there were a group

of people who were my second place choices. And hey, it's my podcast, so nobody can stop me from

just rolling on to them next. Besides, I was really excited about this potential topic because of one of the ways this

podcast has affected my own life.

You see, way back in episode 243, I did an episode on the history of sumo wrestling.

In a sense, it's Japan's national sport, though much to the chagrin of old-timers, it's

also somewhat on the decline today.

Baseball is, of course, by far the most popular sport in the country, with Sumo in the number

two spot for a long time, but recently soccer has started to supplant it, and current

surveys show that of the top 10 most recognized

athletes in Japan, none of them are Rikshi, sumo wrestlers.

So it's a sport that's kind of in crisis, in part because particularly in Japan it's

perceived as a bit old fashioned, something for Oyaji, for old men who slamming Kieran as they yell at their

TV sets, that sort of vibe. In part, the sport also has an image problem from its many recent

scandals. About a decade and a half ago, there was a big one involving revelations that matches

at the highest level had been fixed by the wrestlers participating in them to go along with

smaller scandals associated with the behavior of specific athletes that you see in pretty much

every sport. In a word, modern sumo has issues, but also it's just honestly very fun. And in part

because of that episode, I started watching a couple of

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