Here’s a story I missed while I was out with eye surgery: Asashoryu, one of the greatest sumo wrestlers in history, has retired. And needless to say, for anyone who follows sumo: it’s not quite that simple as that. Indeed, this retirement might lead to an international falling out between Mongolia and Japan. And it provides an opportunity for reflection on the challenges the sumo world – and, perhaps, Japan as a whole – faces in an era of globalization.

Since 2003, Asashoryu – born Dolgorsurengiin Dagvadorj in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, has competed in Japanese sumo as a yokozuna, the highest achievable rank in the sport. He’s won 25 tournaments, giving him the third highest win total in the history of the sport, and in 2005, he won each of the six tournaments, an unprecedented feat. Given his success, you might think he’d be celebrated as a pillar of the sumo world. You’d be wrong.

Asashoryu’s got some strikes against him with potential Japanese fans. His rap sheet is almost as long as his list of tournament wins. His “crimes” range from violations of sumo’s strict laws of decorum, to real transgressions. Here’s how I explained his complex image in sumo the last time he trangressed – leading to an unprecedented two-tournament suspension:

Let�s imagine for a moment that you�re Asashoryu, the sole yokozuna in sumo for three and a half years, a near-unbeatable champion of a sport that demands not just physical prowess, but ritual stoicism and dignity. You report an injury from the most recent tournament in Nagoya, where you won your 21st Emperor�s cup, and return to your native Mongolia to recouperate from your injuries. Then you appear in a charity soccer game in Mongolia, apparently well enough to run around on the field. Obviously, you�re a faker, a fraud, a charlatan, who deserves punishment, either by losing your rank (which would mean retirement from the sport) or by being suspended from tournaments.

Okay, now let�s pretend that you�re a 26 year-old Mongolian named Dolgorsuren Dagvadorj. You live and work in Japan, where people loathe you. You�re constantly accused of participating in match fixing, which seems a bit odd as you win almost all your matches � shouldn�t they be accusing your opponents of throwing matches and complaining about their lack of honor? You�re criticized for transgressions real and imagined � being “too aggressive” and “staring too hard” at opponents in a sport that demands that you throw them to the ground or out of the ring, but also for pulling hair and for scraps with fellow wrestlers outside the ring. Your appearance at bars is the subject of constant tabloid headlines. And you�ve got a temper, which complicates matters.

On the other hand, you�re a national hero in your native Mongolia, and � unsurprisingly � you do your best to spend as much time there are possible. Despite recouperating from a back injury, friends ask you to take the field with Japanese soccer star Hidetoshi Nakata at an event designed to promote soccer in Mongolia. When this causes a shitstorm in Japan, the Mongolian embassy formally apologizes on your behalf…

Unfortunately, Asa’s most recent (alleged) transgression was more serious than an ill-advised foortball match. Japanese tabloids report that Asashoryu got quite drunk in a nightclub during the January basho and beat up someone who’s been variously identified as a fellow patron, a nightclub employee, the bartender, the bar owner… Asashoryu hasn’t commented on the incident, except to say that the reports of the incident were “quite different” than what actually occured. Faced with a likely ban from the sport, he resigned and will be allowed a formal retirement ceremony… and will recieve a retirement allowance of over $1m USD.

I was pissed off at the Japan Sumo Association when they suspended Asa for playing football in Mongolia. I’m more sympathetic to their decision here… but I’m deeply saddened. I’m sad not just that I won’t get to see Asa shatter the record for tournament wins (the conspiracy theory in the Mongolian community says that JSA had to find a pretext to eject Asa before he surpassed records held by Japanese yokozuna). I’m sad that sumo and Asa couldn’t find a way to work together to allow the most talented man in the sport to continue a record-setting career.

I don’t pretend to understand all the nuances of sumo decorum, but it always seemed to me that some aspect of Asa’s uneasy status in sumo circles had to do with his strong Mongolian identity. Non-Japanese have been a part of sumo for decades, and some have been embraced by Japanese fans… though generally to the same extent that they embraced Japanese culture. Hakuho, Asashoryu’s primary rival the past few years and fellow yokozuna, is also from Mongolia, but has been far more widely accepted in Japanese sumo circles, perhaps because he’s more soft-spoken and modest, perhaps because he married a Japanese girlfriend (a decision which angered some of his Mongolian fans.)

Geoff Dean has a thoughtful essay that tries to predict the future for Asashoryu. He notes that most retired rikishi look for work in the wider world of sumo: “He can become a stable master, open a sumo restaurant, become a sumo commentator, or in some way, stay connected to the sumo world.” That’s probably not an option for Asa. Instead, he might follow Akebono, a Hawaiian-born yokozuna, into the mixed martial arts and into less-dignified corners of Japanese pop culture. Underlying Dean’s essay is the point that former non-Japanese sumo wrestlers often have a better opportunity to maintain their status and fame by staying in Japan after their sumo careers have ended. It’s hard for me to imagine Asa doing this – I think it’s more likely that he’ll find a way to stay in combat sports while being based in his homeland.

Dean observes that the most recent golden age of sumo occurred when a Japanese yokozuna – Takanohana – faced off against foreign yokozuna Akebono. This could happen again if Kotomitsuki – one of two Japanese ozeki – makes a run for promotion to join Hakuho as yokozuna. (The other Japanese ozeki – Kaio – is older than I am and will retire soon.) But the real story of sumo this past decade has been the rise of foreign rikishi into the highest ranks – Hakuho (Mongolian, yokozuna), Harumafuju (Mongolian, ozeki), Kotooshu (Bulgarian, ozeki), Baruto (Estonian, sekiwake). There are some Japanese sumo fans who aren’t excited about the idea of a Mongolian/Bulgarian rivalry at the top of the sport. I attended the April basho in Tokyo a few years back and was stunned to see fans handing out colorful photos emblazoned with the image of Japanese ozeki Chiyotaikai… but no one handing out anything featuring the higher-ranked yokozuna, Asashoryu.

Writing in Forbes, Tim Kelly sees sumo’s resistance to accepting Asashoryu and other foreign competitors as a symptom of larger problems associated with a closed society: “Japan, like sumo, is closed, preferring to persevere through depopulation and economic stagnation rather than open its borders to the stimulus offered by opportunity-hungry foreigners. What they choose to ignore is that Japan is running out of money, people and ideas.” He makes that case that Japan needs to increase immigration to spur the Japanese economy and cultivate creativity, and suggests a good first step would be to figure out how to get used to controversial outsiders like Asa, rather than expelling him.

I’m not able to make sweeping generalizations about the Japanese economy or offer as strong a prescription as Kelly does for Japanese society. I will say that I’ve been very proud as a Red Sox fan of the way my team and its fanbase have embraced our two Japanese stars, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima. Shortly after the Sox paid an unbelievable sum of money to negotiate with Matsuzaka, local sportswriters started referring to the new star as “Dice-K”, a nickname designed to help Boston fans correctly pronounce the unfamiliar Japanese name. (I’d love to figure out whether the team started this practice, or whether a clever sportwriter came up with it.) The Red Sox played regular season games in Japan in 2008, and there’s now a third Japanese pitcher – Junichi Tazawa – on the Sox roster. It’s routine to see Sox fans in Fenway sporting Matsuzaka shirts in Fenway with the pitcher’s name written in Hiragana.

Things could have gotten very ugly for Matsuzaka in Boston this past year. He had a lousy season, in part because he showed up for spring training nursing injuries from the World Baseball Classic, where he’d represented Japan and won the MVP trophy (and beat the US in the semifinal round.) Boston was pretty sympathetic, actually – I heard more commentary about the danger of the Baseball Classic for all MLB players than I did specific criticism of Dice-K.

I don’t mean to offer a facile comparison between Boston (which has its own complex history of racism and xenophobia to live down) and Japan and suggest that one’s open and the other closed. What I’ll say instead is that baseball’s become a global sport by embracing players from around the world at its highest level, the MLB. (And not just players – Ecuadorian radio personality Jaime Jarrin is a genuine celebrity in LA as the Spanish-language radio voice of the LA Dodgers.) Sumo could become a global sport by similarly embracing and celebrating this new wave of Asian and European talent. Instead, they’ve banned a pair of Russian wrestlers for alleged drug use and hounded the most talented man in a generation out of the sport. Not a great moment for sumo cosmopolitanism.

It’s the third sumo tournament of the year, the Natsu Basho, held at Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo, and 13 days into the contest, the good and bad of contemporary sumo are on display. The good: both Yokozuna – Asashoryu and Hakuho – are at the top of their game, and my man, Harumafuji – formerly Ama – is kicking ass and taking names. The bad: they’ve got no competition.

Yokozuna are supposed to be dominant – you’re not allowed to assume that rank unless you’re good enough that you can win nearly every match you compete in. Hakuho is currently 13-0, having snuck past Harumafuji earlier today, and unless he loses to Asashoryu on the final day, he’s likely to complete a second consecutive zensho-yusho (perfect tournament.) The video below shows Hakuho’s last tournament, where he destroys fifteen progressively tougher opponents over the course of two weeks – it’s an excellent intro to sumo at the highest levels, practiced by a yokozuna with stunning power and technique. (Hakuho is on the right in all these bouts, dressed in black. For the several matches, he’s fighting lower-ranked rikishi – for the last half dozen, he’s fighting ozeki, and finally Asashoryu, the other yokozuna – you’ll see the matches get longer and far more difficult.)

But ozeki are supposed to be pretty dominant, too. You generally can’t be promoted to sumo’s second-highest rank without thirty wins over three consecutive tournaments, which suggests that you should be capable of ten wins in any given tournament. Ozeki who have losing records in two successive tournaments are stripped of their rank and reduced to Sekiwake – most retire from the sport rather than face this dishonor.

Chiyotaikai, who’s been ozeki for ten years, is facing demotion for the (record) 13th time in his career. He’s weak, injured, and struggling with diabetes, and it would be a good thing for him and for the sport if he retired. Of course, he’s telling the press he plans to remain fighting, even if relegated. The disturbing thing? At 6-7, he might just stave off elimination one more time – his fellow ozeki, who he fights the next two days, may be inclined to ease up in matches against him.

With the exception of Harumafuji, the other ozeki aren’t making real strong showings either. Kaio, who’s almost as decrepit as Chiyotaikai, is 8-5, as is the often impressive Bulgarian Kotooshu. Kotomitsuki hasn’t yet guaranteed himself a winning record at 7-6, and none of these four have been a serious threat throughout the tournament. And so we’ve got three strong, relatively small, Mongolian wrestlers setting the base, and a whole lot of mediocrity throughout the rest of the ranks.

It’s not news that sumo is having trouble attracting new athletes in Japan. The horrific training death of seventeen year-old Takashi Saito (who was beaten to death by training mates on the instruction of his stablemaster, to correct his “vague attitude” about sumo… which the Japan Sumo Association covered up as a death from heart failure… which was finally prosecuted as manslaughter) has certainly not helped attract new converts. In the meantime, sumo is gaining global popularity, not just in Mongolia, but in countries like Bulgaria, where Kotooshu’s success is driving young people to try the sport.

The JSA continues to restrict the number of foreigners who can compete in the sport, despite a strong pipeline of new talent from Mongolia and increasingly from Russia and eastern Europe. I can’t help reading the expulsion of Roho, Hakurozan and Wakanoho – three talented rikishi from Ossetia – for marijuana posession and positive drug tests as having a subtext: it’s another way to keep some of the gaijin off the dohyo.

In the meantime, Kotooshu, the lanky Bulgarian ozeki who’s become popular both in Japan and in his home country, announced that he’ll be marrying a Japanese woman who he’s been dating for five years. Like Kyukutenho, a Mongolian sekiwake who became a Japanese citizen and is now in line to become the head of the Oshima stable, Kotooshu is changing sumo the slow way, diversifying Japanese society and helping broaden and open one of Japan’s most traditional institutions.

I’m following this tournament via CiberSumo – yep, in the cosmopolitan world that is sumo, the best coverage at the moment is put together by Spaniards. They have a small, but excellent, video library that’s very much worth your time. And like SumoTalk, they run a virtual sumo league.

When taking on an important, highly visible, challenging new job, it’s a good idea to perform well on your first couple of days. You know, something impressive like radically overhauling regulations regarding lobbyists, or ordering the shutdown of a prison associated with shameful miscarriages of justice.

Losing your first four matches as an ozeki? Not the recommended way to start a new job.

Like most sumo fans, I’d been looking forward to Harumafuji’s (née Ama) first basho with his heavyweight new name. Who knew? Adding four syllables and two kanjii was enough to slow down the lightweight yet badass Mongolian sufficiently for him to lose his first four matches as an ozeki. That’s a lot of losses, especially for a guy who went 12-3 in his last tournament.

Given my fondness for the dude, I’ve kept my head down, only posting about this tournament now that the little big man has recovered to a 6-6 record and a winning tournament looks to be in sight. I’m vaguely reassured by the fact that he’s not the most embarrasing Ozeki in the tournament – that dishonor goes to Kotomitsuki, who’s 2-10, and who got thoroughly spanked by Harumafuji yesterday. Indeed, Harumafuji has – as is his sometimes ugly pattern – kicked the asses of high ranking rikishi (Ozekis Kaio and Chiyotaikai as well as Yokozuna Hakuho) while losing to mediocre ones.

The one high-ranking rikishi Harumafuji was unable to handle was Yokozuna Asashoryu, who’s 12-0 and thoroughly in charge, as Jordan notes. This is a big surprise to the sumo establishment. Asa’s sumo last year was pretty dreadful, and he pulled out of two tournaments with injury and sat out the November basho. As recently as a couple weeks ago, the wise men of sumo were predicting he’d pull out of this tournament and be pressured towards retirement. His training bouts were weak, and he looked unprepared for the tournament “Based on his performance [at my stable, training with top wrestlers], he won’t last the 15 days,” Isegahama (former yokozuna Asahifuji) said. “It would probably be better for him not to take part.”

Right. The truth may be that Asashoryu is so phenomenally good that, when he’s focused and uninjured, he’s a force of nature, even when he’s not training well. Or perhaps sumo – like most things in life – is wonderful in part because it defies the experts. You’d be hard pressed to find an NFL analyst who would have predicted the Arizona Cardinals to make it to the Superbowl. One of the most successful yokozuna in recent memory seems like a much safer bet than a 37-year old Kurt Warner.

Three days left. My fingers are crossed for kachi-koshi for Harumafuji, a 14-1 tie between Hakuho and Asashoryu leading to a playoff match, and for Obama’s next 98 days to be as impressive as his first two. Oh, and not finishing last in SumoTalk’s virtual sumo league.

A guy can hope, right?

My man Ama went 12-3 in the Kyushu basho, nearly winning the Emperor’s Cup, losing to Hakuho in a hard-fought playoff on the final day of the tournament. I just got the chance to see the playoff via bittorrent, and was certainly not disappointed.

I’ve now watched the match half a dozen times, and I’m amazed by Ama’s ability to stay alive in a match where he’s got half a dozen chances to lose. His grip after the tachi-ai isn’t a good one – he’s forced to compromise his right arm to prevent Hakuho from getting a two-handed grip on his belt. Hakuho has a good chance to force him out of the ring, then explores the possibility of lifting him out, taking him off his feet twice. Then he threatens a pulldown, and Ama ends up with his head under the Yokozuna’s chest. By the time Hakuho executes an overarm throw to end the match, I’m forced to conclude two things: Ama’s the most poised, patient, unpanicked guy I’ve ever seen on the dohyo, and Hakuho’s still a much more powerful rikishi.

The sumo association promoted Ama to Ozeki, and rewarded his basho with his fifth technique prize… but he still hasn’t won an Emperor’s cup. His stablemaster, former Yokozuna Asahifuji, had promised that wrestlers who reached the ozeki rank would change their names. (This is pretty common when rikishi reach the ozeki rank.) So Ama is now Harumafuji – literally “Sun-Horse-Plentiful-Warrior” – and the first ozeki in his stable since 1974.

The chattering classes in the sumo fan community are already arguing that Harumafuji is the second-strongest rikishi in sumo. That strikes me as overly ambitious – both Hakuho and Asashoryu are capable of giving Harumafuji a tough time, and he’s still got a tendency to lose to lower-ranked opponents early in tournaments. Here’s hoping that becoming Ozeki helps him focus in the January basho and we see evidence that he might one day become a Yokozuna.

(And let’s hope my Ama banner becomes a collectible. Thanks, Cyrus, for picking that up for me. Now I need someone to grab a Harumafuji one the next time they’re in Tokyo.)

In summary:
Was Ama, was sekiwake.
Now Harumafuji, now ozeki.
Still Mongolian, still badass.

Ama, my beloved favorite rikishi (sumo wrestler) is tied for the lead in the Kyushu Basho, after defeating Yokozuna Hakuho in a widely anticipated upset match. Tied at 10-2, this pair of Mongolian tacticians are the bright light of an otherwise disappointing tournament. Yokozuna Asashoryu – the favorite whipping boy of the Japanese Sumo Association – withdrew from the tournament before it began, citing a chronic left elbow injury. Yokozuna – grand champions – are never demoted. When they can’t compete anymore at the top level, they’re forced to retire, and there are grumblings that if Asashoryu continues to sit out tournaments, he should step down. (Of course, there are folks who’d like Asa to step down for being too brash, insufficiently respectful or too Mongolian.)

While I admire the clean technicality of Hakuho’s sumo, and am glad that he’s getting the love and respect of the Japanese sumo community, he just doesn’t excite and surprise me when he’s inside the straw ridge. Ama, on the other hand, continues to light up my sumo life. No longer the sub-120kg flyweight of his youth, he’s still one of the smallest men in sumo at 129kg – you can tell who he is in footage of any match, as he’s the little guy who’s blazingly fast.

I can’t find video footage of today’s victory yet, but I offer the above video for a clinic in how little guys can defeat extremely talented, significantly larger rikishi. (Above, Ama defeats Hakuho in the May basho.) There’s a reason Hakuho trains as often as he can with Ama – it’s not just that the Mongolians enjoy hanging out together, but that Ama is the hardest working, craftiest, most patient performer in sumo today.

When Ama entered sumo, it was assumed that he’d never be a candidate for Yokozuna. He’s just too small, and early in his career, he’s been inconsistent. But sumo fans have been watching Kyushu closely, because Ama is making a very serious run at Ozeki, the second-highest rank in sumo. To become Ozeki, it’s generally assumed that a rikishi needs to win 33 matches in three tournaments – an average of 11 matches per tournament. Ama comes in with 22 victories in the last two tournaments, but just winning 11 probably won’t do it here. Since Asashoryu is out and since the Ozeki ranks are, frankly, pretty pathetic (Kaio has withdrawn with a leg injury. Kotooshu is 6-6, Chiyotaikai 7-5 – only Kotomitsuke is guaranteed a winning record (kachi-koshi) at 9-3…), Ama’s going to need to do something special to win promotion.

Beating a Yokozuna is always something special. One critical detail sumo fans will be watching for: how do these new cushions fly? It’s traditional for the fans in the good seats to throw their cushions in the air when a yokozuna is defeated. Always looking for ways to make their sport less exciting and accessible, Nihon Sumo Kyokai has now banned cushion throwing and introduced new, heavier cushions which are harder to throw. I’m willing to bet that didn’t prevent some zabuton from taking flight earlier today. I know I would have had mine in the air, even if it meant being thrown out of the stadium. (The yokozuna match is always last, so it would be an excellent time to be escorted out…)

Will Ama beat Hakuho and win this tournament? That’s really hard to predict – when Hakuho is wrestling well, Ama and Asashoryu are the only rikishi I expect to give him trouble. One’s on the sidelines, and he just lost to the other. But if Hakuho stumbles and Ama plows through the remaining three opponents, it’s hard to imagine the JSA denying him the Ozeki rank. Right? (I’m trying to convince myself here – I’m so baffled by how these decisions get made that very little would surprise me.)

Update: Hakuho and Ama finished the basho with equal 13-2 records. Sumo doesn’t consider head to head matchups – they simply hold playoffs. Ama lost his match to Hakuho, so he still hasn’t won the Emperor’s cup. But his performance earned him the Technique Prize – the 5th of his career. And sumo authorities have confirmed that Ama will be an Ozeki next tournament. Yay!

The leaves turn from green to gold, the days grow shorter, the nights grow colder. The seasons turn slowly from one to another. Large men with few clothes on shove each other out of a ring. The eternal cycle of nature.

One of the wonders of sumo is that it’s always there for you. Not like that fickle football (the American kind) that deserts you when the winters grow cold. Or my beloved baseball, which disappears for a long winter’s nap whether or not the Red Sox win their third world series in five years. Every two months, there’s a 15-day basho. You can set your watch by it, if you happen to have one of those watches that’s accurate only to the week.

And there’s excitement between the bashos as well for the lucky sumo fan. Traditionally, we’re entertained by the exploits of Asashoryu, the brilliant and controversial Mongolian yokozuna, who manages to offend the sumo establisment by glaring, getting into fights and playing soccer. But the backdrop to the current Aki Basho at Ryogoku Kokugikan is even more titilating: a drug scandal.

Russian sumo wrestler Wakanoho was arrested for possesion of marijuana, and the sumo association responded by banning him from the sport for life. His countrymen, brothers Roho and Hakurozan, tested positive for marijuana in a drug test administered to all rikishi. They demanded and failed a second drug test and they, too, have banned from the sport. Shamed by the drug scandal, sumo association chairman Kitonoumi has resigned his post.

(Roho, Hakurozan and Wakanoho all hail from North Ossetia. I mention this not because it has anything to do either with their marijuana use or their grappling prowess. I just don’t know anyone else from North Ossetia, and I always find it easier to pay attention to global news stories when I can say, oh yeah, that’s where Roho comes from. I would note, in passing, that Kokkai hails from Georgia, and that faceoffs between him and the three Russians might have made for interesting matches in the wake of the Ossetian war.)

Jordan, of the excellent 塵も積もれば山となる blog (my favorite spot for daily sumo updates), notes that these bans seem somewhat surprising to non-Japanese fans. In my home state, we’ve got a question on this year’s ballot which would turn possession of less than an ounce of marijuana into a violation, similar in severity to a traffic ticket, and wouldn’t put the charges onto one’s criminal record. Jordan points out that marijuana isn’t viewed nearly this casually in Japanese society, and that the expulsion of these three wrestlers is viewed as a shame for the sport.

Comic by Roberto Devido

Of course, there are less dark ways to view the controversy. Roberto Devido offers a wonderful trio of sumo comics on his blog, Politicomix, which help explain the motivations both of the Russian rikishi and the sumo association. Always good advice – if you’re getting your ass kicked by Mongolians, the munchies will help you put on weight.

Another wonderful thing about sumo: it may well be the only sport in which marijuana is a performance-enhancing drug.

Did I mention that Ama’s 4-1 so far? Or that you can watch excerpts from highlighted matches every day by following helpful links on Jordan’s blog? It’s a wonderful day to be a sumo fan.

In 2000, I spent a lot of time downloading music from Napster. I was working on Geekcorps and we had an office at MassMoCA, which had excellent connectivity. Working very long hours to get a new non-profit off the ground, I was listening to a lot of music in the office, and the ability to discover a new artist via Napster, listen to a few tracks, then buy albums via Amazon was one of those experiences that left me thinking, “Man, the internet just makes the world better.”

Obviously, not everyone felt that way, and when Metallica sued Napster in 2000, I was one of the 317,377 users banned from the system. I was also one of the 316,784 (that’s an estimate) users to run de-ban, rebuilding my registry so I could rejoin the network.

I didn’t stay long after the ban. Napster shut down shortly after, and the services that stepped in to replace it were, from the perspective of a music fan, not very good. I rekindled my love affair with independent record stores, bought a lot of used CDs and vinyl, and have generally missed the whole move to BitTorrent and peer to peer filesharing. Chalk one up for the RIAA, I suppose, but with the instant gratification of downloadable, legal music from iTunes and Amazon, I just haven’t been that tempted.

Up until about a week ago. Two things happened to lead me back to the dark side. One is that I was introduced to Dr. Johan Pouwelse, a fascinating guy who’s doing research on the power and potential of peer to peer networks. He’s in the odd position of having extensive funding from the European Union to build extremely powerful peer to peer systems, and he’s (understandably) interested in finding non-infringing uses for peer to peer technology. Pouwelse wondered what I thought about P2P as a method for distributing activist video – I though it was a cool idea, but probably premature, as centralized systems like WITNESS’s Video Hub, as well as more conventional solutions like YouTube, are working reasonably well for video authors. The main problems with activist video aren’t around content blocking but around the difficulty of authoring compelling media and in discovering this media – P2P doesn’t directly help with either problem.

In the course of talking with Pouwelse, I decided to try out his software, Tribler, which combines a peer to peer client, video playback software and some interesting ideas on search. What’s most interesting about the software is the idea that users can use bandwidth as currency, allowing the system to better address the free rider problem and reward users to sharing as well as downloading.

Purely for research purposes :-) I decided to try Pouwelse’s software… which meant finding something I was interested in to search for. Since we’re in the midst of the fourth sumo tournament of the year, the Nagoya Basho, I started looking for match footage. Bingo. Some kind souls have been recording and digitizing NHK’s English-language broadcast of the tourament, and posting it, day by day, in gigabyte-sized files on torrent servers.

It wasn’t even a question. I’m hooked. I’ve been sucking down the files during the workday and spending my evenings watching bouts on the laptop. I picked the right tournament to re-enter the world of filesharing. Asashoryu, the brilliant and controversial Yokozuna, dropped out of the tournament today after a poor call cost him a second loss early in the tournament. Kotooshu, the impressive Bulgarian Ozeki who won the previous tournament, picked up two losses early, but is still very much in the hunt, two wins behind Yokozuna Hakuho, who remains undefeated. And my very favorite, Sekiwake Ama, a scrappy, tiny (by sumo standards) Mongolian technician, started 5-0, before blowing the sixth match to his archnemesis Kotoshogiku. Can’t you feel the excitement?

My main man, Ama, sporting the Nike logo on his kesho-mawashi. Didn’t know Nike was making sumo gear these days.

There’s a few ways to watch sumo from the US, though none of them appear to be sanctioned by NHK, which broadcasts the matches in Japan. The excellent Chiri mo tsumoreba blog features good commentary (neither as comprehensive or as snarky as at Sumotalk) as well as links to match highlights posted on YouTube. Some are commented in English, others in Japanese. While useful, they’re tough if you don’t speak Japanese, as you’ve got to listen very closely for who’s fighting – in watching a full tournament, you can rely on the match card, which I usually find at Goo Sumo. With a match card and a bit torrent client, you can enjoy the entire foot-stamping, salt-throwing, big-men-staring ceremony of the event. Google “torrent nagoya day x” where “x” is the appropriate day of the tournament, and you’ll find a torrent link in no time.

Here’s the thing – I’d vastly prefer to pay for this content. Not out of any sort of sense of legality – for purely practical reasons. NHK has threatened, in the past, to stop broadcasting with English-language commentary. This commentary’s pretty essential for non-Japanese speaking fans. This sport is fast, complicated and extremely subtle, something that benefits greatly from a knowledgeable commentator. If paying NHK for a download – on iTunes, for instance – means they’ll keep producing English commentary, I’ll do my part.

I buy Chris Anderson’s argument in The Long Tail that the Internet makes saleable content that has small audiences. What surprises me is how few media producers seem to understand this argument. NHK will sell you the right to broadcast the bashos, but doesn’t seem interested in taking money from individual consumers, even though they offer premium satellite packages for Japanese speakers living outside the nation.

Here’s the thing, NHK – if there’s a sufficient audience for your content, it’s going to end up on peer to peer networks. Why not give those of us who’d pay for it the chance to do so?

As a bonus, watch Ama beat up Ozeki Chiyotaikai in this video from day 5 from the tournament, created the old fashioned way – with a video camera focused on the television. Can you say “analog hole“, boys and girls? I knew you could.

Added bonus: an Ars Technica piece on Dr. Pouwelse’s research.

Let’s imagine for a moment that you’re Asashoryu, the sole yokozuna in sumo for three and a half years, a near-unbeatable champion of a sport that demands not just physical prowess, but ritual stoicism and dignity. You report an injury from the most recent tournament in Nagoya, where you won your 21st Emperor’s cup, and return to your native Mongolia to recouperate from your injuries. Then you appear in a charity soccer game in Mongolia, apparently well enough to run around on the field. Obviously, you’re a faker, a fraud, a charlatan, who deserves punishment, either by losing your rank (which would mean retirement from the sport) or by being suspended from tournaments.

Okay, now let’s pretend that you’re a 26 year-old Mongolian named Dolgorsuren Dagvadorj. You live and work in Japan, where people loathe you. You’re constantly accused of participating in match fixing, which seems a bit odd as you win almost all your matches – shouldn’t they be accusing your opponents of throwing matches and complaining about their lack of honor? You’re criticized for transgressions real and imagined – being “too aggressive” and “staring too hard” at opponents in a sport that demands that you throw them to the ground or out of the ring, but also for pulling hair and for scraps with fellow wrestlers outside the ring. Your appearance at bars is the subject of constant tabloid headlines. And you’ve got a temper, which complicates matters.

On the other hand, you’re a national hero in your native Mongolia, and – unsurprisingly – you do your best to spend as much time there are possible. Despite recouperating from a back injury, friends ask you to take the field with Japanese soccer star Hidetoshi Nakata at an event designed to promote soccer in Mongolia. When this causes a shitstorm in Japan, the Mongolian embassy formally apologizes on your behalf, saying:

We put pressure on him to be on the field to allow children to interact with a national hero. The original plan was to let him leave the field after a brief while, but his presence generated so much enthusiasm that we could not allow him to do so. We apologize for having caused this serious incident and for putting both the Japan Sumo Association and yokozuna Asashoryu in an unpleasant situation.

The Japan Sumo Association has issued an unprecedented sanction against Asashoryu – they have cut his annual salary by 30% and suspended him from the next two tournaments. Many Japanese fans don’t think this is sufficient – 46% want to see Asa banned from sumo altogether, while only 7% thought this punishment was too harsh. Unsurprisingly, Asa is feeling a bit depressed – a JSA doctor describes him as being “days away from a breakdown”. The big man is locked in his apartment, and a 90 minute meeting with his stablemaster didn’t convince him to either return to training or to seek medical help for both physical and psychological ailments.

Sumo is an unusual sport, inasmuch as there’s really only one country where one can make a living as a rishiki… and in that country, the sport is viewed as vastly more than just an athletic contest. Simply being the best athlete in the sport is insufficient to be a celebrated Yokozuna – Asashoryu is expected to respect the ritual of the sport and to set an example for other wrestlers. His task is complicated by the fact that Hakuho, a new Yokozuna (and a fellow Mongolian) is respected for being quiet, unassuming and uncontroversial. The idea of throwing Asa out of the sport is likely more palatable given that there would still be a grand champion.

There’s been a meeting of cultures in sumo for years, since Takamiyama – the Hawaiian-born Jesse James Wailani Kuhaulua – won an Emperor’s Cup in 1972. Hawaii has a strong sumo culture , connected to Japanese emigration to Hawaii throughout the 20th century. While Takamiyama became thoroughly assimilated into Japanese sumo and ended up opening his own sumo stable, other rishiki have not had as smooth a path. Konishiki and other darker-skinned Hawaiian wrestlers were sometimes referred to as “the black ships” – a reference to Commodore Perry’s ships that forcibly opened Japan to international commerce in 1854. There’s some discomfort with the current Mongolian dominance of sumo, which some argue is turning Japanese fans off from the sport. I nearly provoked a fight at a baseball game in Chiba when I told a Japanese acquaintance that Asashoryu and Kyokushuzan (both Mongolians) were my favorite rishiki – he was deeply offended that I listed two Mongolian wrestlers as my favorites.

I realize that I’m biased and that I’ve got a big soft spot for Mongolian wrestlers in general and Asa in particular… but it seems like there’s a remarkable lack of compassion for Asashoryu in this situation. He’s in a difficult situation – unable to practice his sport except in Japan and unable to do so in Japan without a flood of criticism. Yes, many of his wounds are self-inflicted, and other Mongolian wrestlers have managed to assimilate more smoothly than he has. But it sometimes seems like Asa’s biggest crime is not being Japanese enough, a crime the patriotic Mongolian would likely confess to.

The May basho at Ryogoku Kokugikan ended yesterday with a clash between two profoundly talented rikishi. One was Asashoryu, who has been the sole Yokozuna – grand champion – of the sport since Takanohana retired in 2003. The other was Hakuho, who held an Ozeki rank (one rank below Yokozuna) and defeated Asashoryu to win his second Emperor’s Cup in a row. (The match was truly one for the ages – very much worth the ninety seconds it will take you to watch it.)

The criteria to be promoted to Yokozuna aren’t exact, but it is generally accepted that winning two tournaments in a row as an Ozeki is sufficient for promotion. So unless the Japan Sumo Association does something very expected – shrugging off the recommendation of the Yokozuna Deliberation Council – Hakuho will be named Yokozuna, and sumo will have two Mongolian Yokozuna.

This is very, very good news for sumo fans. There’s been a stunning degree of predictability to sumo since late 2003, when Asashoryu became Yokozuna – he won five of six tournaments in 2004, all six in 2005, and went 4-2 in 2006 – he was forced to withdraw from one of the 2006 bashos with an elbow injury. Basically, there were three years where you could expect Asa to win every match he fought, where his few losses were worth watching closely to see what had happened.

Some of Asa’s dominance comes from the fact that he’s an utterly remarkable wrestler. He’s quite light for a rikishi – about 148kg – and wins his matches with a combination of speed, technique and strength. For those of us who watched huge wreslers like Akebono dominate sumo through their sheer size (Akebono’s fighting weight orbited around 235kg), Asa has been a revelation to watch, tangible evidence that sumo is an art form, not overweight men running into each other. But Asashoryu has also looked good because so many of the Ozeki have looked really, really bad – Kaio and Chiyotaikai in particular have probably held their rank too long, and Bulgarian rikishi Kotooshu has dissapointed since being promoted in January 2006.

My hope is that Hakuho, five years younger than Asashoryu, roughly the same mass, and still polishing his technique, will threaten Asa in many basho to come, giving fans a possible rivalry to follow. But sports rivalries aren’t just about great athletes – they’re about great storylines, and it’s unclear what storyline will prevail in the Japanese media.

Asashoryu isn’t very popular in Japan, to put it bluntly. He’s viewed as an anti-traditionalist: he’s been known to show emotion on the dohyo when winning matches, occasionally displaying a minor fist-pump; he pulled the hair of Kyokushuzan in the July 2003 tournament leading to his disqualification; he has been photographed wearing a suit (yes, this is considered a major transgression for rikishi). Asa’s strong Mongolian identity has helped cement the ire of some Japanese fans – some foreign rikishi have become figures in Japanese popular culture, becoming sumo commentators or entertainers. Asa has refused Japanese citizenship and caused something of a scandal when he chose to get married in Mongolia rather than in Japan. (This argument centered on the obligations a rikishi has to his oyakata – the “stablemaster” of a sumo training stable. Traditionally, the rikishi gives 60% of all earnings to the oyakata… and those earnings include wedding gifts. Asa’s oyakata demanded his share of Asa’s wedding gifts, despite the fact that the wedding was held in Mongolia, leading to an apparent confontation between the wrestler and his management.)

If you believe the Japanese press, Asashoryu is a rude, abusive drunk with no respect for sumo’s tradition. More to the point, you’d be led to believe he’s a cheat. One set of accusers claim that Asa has been paying opponents $6,500 a match to let him win bouts. Another set claim that Asa has been paid $25,000 by Hakuho to throw matches and let him become Yokozuna. A flurry of defamation suits have been filed against Shukan Gendai, a controversial Japanese weekly which has published the majority of these accusations.

The problem with sumo, of course, is that there can be a note of truth to these stories. Steven Levitt and Mark Duggan published an extraordinary paper with an econometric analysis of the final matches of sumo tournaments – they found evidence that wrestlers with losing records lost far more often than you would expect in their final matches against opponents who are “on the bubble” – i.e., with 7-7 records. This wouldn’t suggest that Asashoryu – who’s basically never had a losing record – would throw matches to Hakuho, but it opens the specter of match-fixing in a sport where there’s always a backstory to the action in the dohyo.

(My favorite, completely non-confirmable and wholly undocumented backstage story: According to one of the rowdy, unreputable sumo sites I read, Asashoryu attended the celebration of Hakuho’s wedding in Mongolia and promised the crowd that he would give Hakuho an unusual wedding gift: a GAZ-69 jeep. While these former Soviet-army vehicles are quite popular in rural Mongolia, it’s likely that Hakuho already has a much nicer car, leading to speculation that this was code for Asashoryu “giving” Hakuho the title as the 69th Yokozuna. Since Asa came into the final match yesterday at 10-4, with Hakuho at 14-0, there was no need for a “gift”… but sumo fans will speculate that Asa might have thrown the playoff match in the previous tournament, which gave the victory to Hakuho…)

Hakuho seems to have a great deal more support in Japan that Asashoryu. His backstory may help out – he was so small (62kg) when he first came to Japan that no sumo stable would accept him. Kyokushuzan, a widely-respected and pioneering Mongolia rikishi, intervened and found a place for him in his stable, coaching him through some of his early matches. Unlike Asa, he got married in Japan, and has made it clear that he wants to be “a yokozuna that everyone loves.”

Good luck with that. The Yokozuna many Japanese fans want to love is a Japanese-born rikishi. But given the poor quality of Japanese wrestlers, and the increasing dominance of the foreign born, it’s likely that Japanese fans may need to settle for a more loveable Mongolian, at least for a few years to come.

Bonus links: Banzuke.com has video footage of the first 14 days of the May basho – I’m anxiously awaiting the 15th day, so I can see the match between Asa and Hakuho. I recommend Hakuho’s defeat of Kotooshu on day 12 as a useful introduction to his skills. (Hakuho’s on the left – the Bulgarian is the tall guy on the right.) While you’re at it, watch my main man Ama bully the big Bulgarian on day 10…

Bruce Wallace with the LA Times has the definitive Asashoryu profile, as far as I’m concerned.

The 2007 sumo season is off and running, and we’re five days into the New Year basho at Ryogoku Kokugikan. There’s less excitement than some would like, at least in the pre-match standings – Asashoryu (4-1) is still the only yokozuna, and of the five ozeki who might look towards promotion to yokozuna, fellow Mongolian Hakuho (3-2) looks like the only rikishi likely to threaten his dominance. Hakuho is recovering from a broken toe, and while he’s pretty fighting well so far, he won’t likely be promoted after this tournament, even if he outpaces Asashoryu, as he missed last year’s final two tournaments. (Indeed, a bad tournament and he’ll likely drop from Ozeki ranks.)

The drama so far, for those of us who root for the Mongolian wrestlers, has been Ama’s brave performance right after his father’s death. The smallest (124kg!) of all wrestlers in top-level sumo, Ama (4-1) has risen to #4 maegashira rapidly with a combination of brilliant technique and a great deal of self-confidence. But he’s clearly shaken in this tournament by the news he received on December 29th of his father’s death in a car crash and his brother’s injury. He returned to Mongolia soon after, and didn’t come back to Tokyo until the day before the basho.

Ama asked his stable manager to allow him to sit out the basho – according to reports from Sumotalk, he wasn’t able to eat for several days after receiving the news, and asked some of his stablemates to sleep in his room. Photos of Ama after his first match – a hard-fought victory over the Estonian Baruto – show him with his face buried in a towel. (Image stolen from SumoTalk, who you really should be reading every day during this basho.)

Despite his psychological struggles, Ama’s having an excellent tournament – he won his first three matches before losing to the Georgian Kokkai (2-3). He’s had strong support from his countrymen, including Asashoryu, who said that he’s drawn inspiration from Ama’s brave performance. Ama’s father was an elite wrestler in Mongolia and had urged the Ajigawa-oyakata (the stablemaster of the Ajigawa stable) to bring his son to Japan, saying “Please take him. He will give you his all.” So far, the son has honored the father’s promise.

I’ll be rooting for Ama this tournament… then again, I’m always rooting for Ama. But I have high hopes that Ama will perform well enough to win his second fighting spirit prize. I remember Brett Farve’s 41-7 victory over the Raiders just a day after his father’s death as one of the most extraordinary football games I’ve ever seen. Sustaining that sort of intensity over a fifteen day tournament, while grieving? That’s an amazing test of character.

Asashoryu lifts Ama out of the ring at a demonstration match in Las Vegas, 2005. Still think these guys aren’t athletes?