時津風 山本順一 相撲



Former sumo coach, Junichi Yamamoto, AKA Tokitsukaze, 59, was sentenced to six years in jail on May 29 for ordering the beating of an apprentice that caused the 17-year-old boy’s death.

The incident happened in June 2007 after the apprentice had tried to run away from the stable. Not only did Yamamoto assault him with a beer bottle and force him to train to the point where he could barely stand, but he ordered three other apprentices to “teach him a lesson” upon which he died shortly after.

Sumo is already in the doldrums in terms of the number of new recruits it is able to attract, so scandal is the last thing it needs. In spite of the world of sumo being, like any other traditional pursuit in Japan, cloaked in shadows and behind-the-scenes wirepulling, clearly manslaughter was too much, and the full spotlight was turned on it. It was decried by the then prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, and the stable master, Yamamoto, was ejected from the Sumo Association.

The process from the incident itself to Yamamoto’s ejection can be partly deduced by the fact that the initial official verdict on the boy’s death was “illness,” but an autopsy ordered later on made clear it was due to physical trauma.

The atmosphere of a sumo stable is intense. I was fortunate to be able to witness it first-hand in a tour of a sumo stable earlier this year. Discipline is absolute, everything is done in unison, and the apprentices’ day is strictly regimented. And, as you can imagine, just being patted on the head by one of them would probably put you out cold, let alone getting intentionally beaten up.

Former stablemaster Yamamoto intends to appeal his sentence.

Rough Guide To Japan

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Japan Tokyo sumo death Tokitsukaze

火葬場、八事

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust...we've all got to go sometime and if you kick the bucket in Nagoya, chances are your last port of call, before the Pearly Gates or the fires of Hell (if you believe in all that nonsense), will be the vast, industrial crematorium near Yagoto.



The Yagato crematorium, near an equally giant cemetery, processes corpses in about 40 minutes. Bodies are brought in from the funeral ceremony and placed on a steel tray. A crematorium attendant, dressed in black, presses a button and the tray, laden with the corpse, travels into a torpedo tube-sized oven. The attendant, most likely a member of Japan's buraku underclass, doffs his black baseball cap, bows and presses another switch. The fires inside the oven ignite.



The mourners are lead into a separate room and await a call over the intercom when the body has been fully incinerated. The head is always the last part of the body to be completely reduced by the licking flames. Family and friends return as the tray is pulled from the oven. The corpse, reduced to ashes, resembles a cigarette left to burn in an ashtray and still radiates considerable heat.

Close relatives pick at the ashes (ikotsu) with (often uneven) chopsticks and place the remains in an urn or several urns. The most important piece of the body to include is the Adam's apple (nodobotoke).

The family then return home in a different direction to that they have arrived in - a supersition to throw off the deceased's spirit from attempting to return home and haunting the family. On arrival back at base, salt is thrown on the mourners, in another superstitious rite, to cleanse the lingering aura of death and a solemn meal is often then eaten.

The ashes of the deceased are usually divided after collection and kept in a household shrine (butsudan) at the family home and at a grave in the cemetery.


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Japanese funeral death crematorium Nagoya