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Mariko Senju: Indispensable to Japan

The violinist is indispensable to Japan

 

One question culture is often asked: What role does it play after the earthquake and tsunami in March? Because it can give relief, energy and hope, it should be used to provide encouragement to the victims and survivors of the disaster and to reconstruct disaster affected areas. But How?

 

Mariko Senju, a Japanese violinist, shows how to do it. She held a recital at Tokorozawa Muse in Saitama in October. She mainly performed pieces that heal feelings and pains, ranging from Ave Maria by Bach, Sonata Pathetic by Beethoven to Moonlight by Debussy. At the recital she said that she has been performing pieces full of comfort this year.

 

Many studies show that classical music has healing effects. A paper from Southern Medical Association in 2005 says that music distracts patients from pain and unpleasant feelings and improves mood. Several reasons can be given for those effects. One reason may be that classical music connects memories to make a drama, according to an expert.

 

The minds of performers may be related to music’s healing power. Ms Senju scientifically researched music in college. As a result, she found that it was the core part of consciousness of the performer that reached audiences. As she has played in front of dying elderly people at a hospice before, it is very important for her to put her heart in the sounds. That is what she learnt from that experience.

 

Bach’s songs seem to have something to do with healing. To her, his pieces are prayer. She says that they make her feel enlightenment beyond human knowledge and tell her that there is no one who cannot rise from despair. Even Seiji Ozawa, a Japanese conductor, performed Aria on G as a requiem for the victims of the Hanshin-Awaji earthquake in 1995. All this suggests that Bach’s pieces are a miracle cure to bring healing to people.

 

America offers an example of what role culture plays after tragic events. There is a view that its cultural atmosphere has changed after the 9/11: a shift from selfishness to caring for others. “God Bless America” had a huge resurgence in popularity partly because it is one of the few songs most American people know, according to Harvard Gazette. [i] “On The Transmigration of Souls” was created, which is like a large cathedral to which people go with their thoughts. According to an American writer, this song finds university in a way that nothing else yet has in classical music: it speaks directly to the tragedy while simultaneously transcending it.[ii]

 

In both Japan and abroad artists feel the same things after such tragedies. They feel powerless, but they want to somehow help victims. To have and maintain this sense of connection, Masaharu Fukuyama, one of the most popular singers in Japan, run a 24-hour charity radio programme after the 3/11. Most of music is borne out of strong feelings of performers and composers. Sincere and personal responses translate best to the treating of others, says one American writer.[iii]

[i] Havard Gazette “American tune”

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/american-tune/

 

Forest Reminiscence Therapy: Accepting in Forests

A doctor invented a new approach to mental diseases and dementia of the elderly. It may prove very useful to Japan

 

Japan is greying. With ageing population rising faster than other advanced countries, dementia is increasing too. There were over 250 thousand people with dementia in 2010; it is expected to rise to 340 thousand in 2020. In Tohoku region, where the earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant occurred in March, there are between 6400 and 8400 people with the symptom, according to one estimate. Among victims are also those who want to heal their mental scares. How should Japan deal with dementia and healing of minds of the elderly? Reminiscence therapy (RT) in forests is a useful solution to those issues.

 

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Tokyo Trick Art Museum: If You Change the Angle, a Picture Looks Different…Perhaps Your World Too

If you change the angle, a picture looks different. Perhaps your world, too.

Deceive your eyes

YOU may think that you want to increase your creativity and create new ideas. But you don’t know how to do so. Going to museums is instrumental because it gives you inspiration. But sometimes looking at a different style of art may work.

“Tokyo Trick Art Museum” is currently open in Odaiba, Tokyo. Many trompe-l’oeil pictures and parodies of masterpieces and the like are exhibited there. The museum has different sections; an Edo area, a not-scary horror mansion, a masterpiece area and a brain training corner. Each of them is entertaining.

Most of the paintings there are inspiring. Pictures portraying a town in the Edo era and ones of a dinosaur and a shark, both of which open their big mouths wide, are drawn in three dimensions. They make visitors think hard about how to take funny pictures.

Depending on the angle and the place where you look at them, pictures and their impressions change. For example, an odalisque. The lengths of her legs become longer or shorter if seen from different angles.

These trompe-l’oeil pictures have a good effect on us. This style of art uses perspective and chiaroscuro in a bid to make two-dimensional pictures three-dimensional. The way we think or perceive things is often fixed. It is like a method of painting, which has a great influence on your world. But, like trompe-l’oeil, if you change your thoughts and the way you see things, you can change your world. Many western psychologists say that.

Paintings in Tokyo Trick Art Museum are drawn by artists of S.D Co., Ltd. in Tochigi prefecture. The aim of the company is to make arts more entertaining and closer to ordinary people. Using trompe-l’oeil, it also helps revitalise regional communities prosper and promotes Japanese culture abroad. The company has worked with many regional tourism agencies and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.

If you want to increase your creativity or change your world, visiting Tokyo Trick Art Museum will be good. If you don’t like this kind of art, try it just for the heck of it.

Kukai and esoteric Buddhism: Secret teachings

Kukai and esoteric Buddhism help us understand the universe

 

Kukai’s World: The Arts of Esoteric Buddhism (Tokyo National Museum Heiseikan 2011 July 20th – September 25th)

 

What's the universe? Come and see it.

WHAT is the universe? Many philosophers and scientists in the world have been trying to find an answer to that throughout the history. Although they seem to come closer to the truth, they have yet to reach there. But Kukai, the founder of Shingon school of Buddhism, and esoteric Buddhism help narrow that distance.

 

“Kukai’s world and the arts of esoteric Buddhism” was taking place in Heiseikan of Tokyo National Museum at Ueno until September 25th. Probably, it was the best of exhibitions of Kukai and esoteric Buddhism ever held in Japan. About 100 pieces of arts of esoteric Buddhism were brought there for people to see. Most of which are rare: almost all of them are National Treasures and Important Cultural Assets. The gallery consists of four parts, and each of them is well arranged, holding things together.

 

Kukai had energy and was filled with spirit. When he was young, he quitted studying and went training in mountains himself. And there he got an inspiration. Like world’s greatest people, he was very determined and creative with a good intuition. For example, Shoryoshu Collection of Chinese Writings and Roko shiiki (Teachings for the Deaf and Blind) are beautifully and elegantly written by him. From these, not only can you feel his passion, but you can see that he had a cool head as well.

 

It is thus small wonder that it took just a few years for him to master esoteric Buddhism in China where he studied. While teaching people about the beliefs of Buddhism is passive, esoteric Buddhism is active; although the latter tells how, it does not the secret teachings of it: you must find them yourself. That is exactly what young Kukai did. It is said that he became an envoy to China on his own. This exhibition would have been more interesting had it showed how he worked hard to earn money.

 

Mandala caught viewers’ eyes. When it comes to it, what is important is to see and feel. I was overwhelmed by Ryokai (Two Worlds) mandala, but after a while I realised something: “Everything in the universe may be like this”.

 

Countless numbers of small circles with cores are linked each other to form a large circle. And the large circle is included in a larger circle. In short, every circle is part of a whole circle. This may be the universe: Everything is connected in a single large circle. Mandala may express this holistic view. These invisible connections are already famous in science such as hologram and quantum physics. From this point of view, the Mandala of Sculptures section, which came last in the exhibition, were all the more interesting. I may have found one of the secret teachings of esoteric Buddhism.■

Film: One Life

The film offers a new way to think about nature and ecology

“One Life” produced by BBC Earth

 

NATURE is great. Many people think so. If you watch this film, it makes the idea stronger. At a time when the relationship between nature and humans has been reconsidered, One Life offers a new perspective on environmental and ecological issues.

 

The film starts with a question: What is life? To eat, to feed and protect a family. In short, it is to survive, the film says. Then, a family of seals appears on the screen. The mother shields her baby against a heavy storm. The film presents six stories featuring various creatures from reptilian, insects, birds and primates.

 

From this film we can understand that animals and insects are the same as humans. But that is not all. The film contains more beautiful pictures than any other wildlife documentary films.  They show not only how smart those creatures are, but also some of them are even smarter than humans. Take bottlenose dolphines. They use mud as a trick to get fish to eat. That is just amazing. And it is staggering to see basilisk running on water.

 

Animals, insects and plants are all living desperately, but the way they die also sticks in my mind. While Komodo dragons bite a buffalo to poison the animal, which continues until it dies, the eyes of the buffalo look as if it realised something is going on. Meanwhile, an octopus spawns in the sea. Seeing her babies going out into the world, she is quieltly dying.  It is a pitiful but beautiful sight. I wonder if this is what returning to nature after death means.

 

The film is produced by BBC Earth and is their sixth in a series of documentaries about nature. Without cutting-edge technologies and high budget, they could not shoot and show beautiful pictures. Behind it lies the British spirit of explorer. Japan does rarely produce wildlife documentary films like One Life. There are many television documentaries on the subject, but not so in the theatre. Now, because of the budget deficit of the British government, BBC’s budget has been cut. This film, however,  shows its doggedness and pride as a leader in the media.

 

The co-director, Martha Holmes, studied at Bristol University. BBC Natural History Unit, which produces this series, locates their headquter in this city. There seems to be a link between me and  them for I used to live there as a student of the same university as her.

 

Perhaps, even though it is neither visible nor tangible, all creatures are connected, that is, a sense of oneness with the natural world. Basically, humans and  other creatures have the same thought, which proves that idea. Few other films provide this fresh and important perspective on environmental and ecological issues better than One Life. It should be high on your list of film.

 

The Konno’s House: Like Father

It gives the opportunity to think about family

 

This is beautiful. The house of the Konno is in Tagajyo city in Miyagi prefecture and is next to Tohoku History Museum. The building is registered as a tangible cultural asset of the prefecture. Its huge thatched roof catches visitors’ eyes. Its main house, built in 1769, is Spartan. It has six rooms and a large kitchen. The family was kimoiri, the village headman, in the Edo era. His house shows his power quietly. There are two rooms to have officials down the corridor. Since then time has changed, but it is still easy for ordinary people to realise that the family was affluent. With a good structure, houses like this deserve to be called yashiki or castle if you like.

 

Old houses are preserved across the country, but what is remarkable about this house is that it offers the opportunity to learn the traditional family system. There are two toilets. One is for the master; and the other for the rest of the family. The kitchen, too, is divided into two. One is for the family use; and the other for servants. It is surprising to see these clear differences in social status and positions under the same roof. This makes visitors think about how patriarchy was like. Besides, unlike today where families sit around the table to eat together, people at that time used low tables to eat meals individually. This makes a difference in how children think of their fathers between the past and today. Fathers were very scary in the past.

 

With little information on him, it is unclear whether the master was scary or not. But he does not seem to be unkind. That is evidenced by the fact that there were two families who had lost their houses in the Konno’s house where his wife, mother and grand-father and sister lived. This suggests he had a strong sense of justice.

 

Regardless the number of family members, people learn from their families. I guess that people around the kirimori learnt important things, such as how to live and die, from his behaviour and works. Although he was a politician who has to play a dirty trick, he did good things, which is why this house is still worthwhile. Household and Buddhist altars inside the house suggest this. Worshipping his ancestors, he prayed for his family’s prosperity, health, the success of his job and peace in the village. He had care and compassion not just for his family but people in the village. He protected all of them.

 

The Japanese word ie (family) contains a meaning of “spread a blanket on things”. This can be interpreted as “defend”. Meantime, the English word family is derived from “serve”, which originally came from “slave”. This can mean “working for others”. These things are linked: home is the place where people do them at home. “A house is a fine house when good folks are within”, a British proverb says. They are common but important and are steadily disappearing today. Isolation of individuals and solitary death of elderly people are increasing. But Japan’s triple disasters made family values stronger than ever. What will it be like in the future? Who knows, but because somehow people feel fragile, this house may be valuable enough to be a cultural asset. If so, it’s a pity.

Illness In Tohoku

Illness that disaster victims in Tohoku are suffering is connected with society and economy. To recover from it, something spiritual is important

 

Devastated Fukanuma seaside after disaster

NOTHING was there. Fukanuma seaside in Sendai in Miyagi prefecture was destroyed by a devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11th. The debris from the disaster is left on sea-swamped rice paddies. “I can’t believe it”, say security guards there. They were shocked out of their wits by the sights that changed completely. Dead bodies were found and a few people are still missing there. “It makes me cry”, the guards lament. They are not the only people who are suffering from pain. To recover from and prevent illness, what is needed for disaster victims?

 

After the disaster, including the nuclear accident at Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, there are many people in Tohoku, the devastated region in the north-east, who got sick. According to Mainichi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, more than three hundred people need mental care among disaster victims in the seaboard of Iwate prefecture. Tohoku University School of Medicine found that more than one hundred people got flu in evacuation centres in Miyagi in late March. It warns that the risk of the outbreak of infectious disease is growing.

 

The main cause of infectious disease is that it is difficult to maintain a sanitary environment of refugee centres. Some 54 thousand refugees live there together. At first water was in short supply thus they could not wash hands or gargle. Neither could they clean bathrooms and floors. Vaccines and medicines did not come either because of disturbed medical supply-chain. In Sendai, the flu had been widespread for a few months before the earthquake. So refugees are likely to catch infectious disease in such an environment.

 

To maintain clean refugee centres with sanitary conditions, alcohol is used instead of water. Medicine has been given by medical companies and medical universities. Tohoku University is working together with Miyagi to call for people to wash hands and gargle thoroughly in order to prevent the spread of infectious disease. Meanwhile, the prefecture formed a mental care team with doctors who have degrees in western medicine, nurses, clinical psychotherapists and mental health welfare professionals. Acupuncture is practiced too.

 

Despite those all-out efforts to improve health, they are not enough to solve the underlying cause of illness. As Fritjof Capra, a physicist and system theorist, says in his book The Turning Point, “Health is really a multidimensional phenomenon involving interdependent physical, psychological, and social aspects”. The appearance of illness is attributable to social and economic environment, which affect individual minds and bodies. Mrs Yukari Oba, a member of staff at social service department of Miyagi prefecture who is in charge of its mental care team, says, “To care minds of victims, it is very important to help them secure food, clothing and materials for housing, get back to their ordinary life and solve the problem of employment and other economic issues. In doing so, they can feel peace of mind and safety”. It is clear that unless those are achieved or solved, victims will continue to feel stress or anxious that affects their minds; hence never recover from illness.

 

There are three major causes of their stress and worries. The first is nuclear power plants in Tohoku. Miyagi and Aomori run Mekawa nuclear power station and Rokkasyo nuclear reprocessing plant respectively. The danger is that the former is located in an active fault zone. It threatened local people when a major earthquake happened in Miyagi in 2008. Although Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan decided to stop Hamaoka nuclear power plant, other plants will continue to operate. Meanwhile, after the nuclear accident in Fukushima, local farmers and tourist industries were hit hard by rumours. Japanese government temporarily banned exports of agricultural crops from places near the nuclear plant while neighbour countries stopped imports due to fears of radiation. For the same reason foreign tourists rapidly decreased.

 

The second is unemployment. Agriculture and fisheries are important industries in Tohoku. The region has 487 thousand farmers, consisting 5.21% of its population, which is the highest in Japan. But because of aging and depopulation, the primary industry is hollowing out. In 2007, while its agricultural and fisheries output was over 900 billion yen, that of manufacturing industry was more than 6.7 trillion yen. Then came the quake and tsunami. There are growing worries over job security. The Japan Research Institute, a think-tank, predicts between 140,000 and 200,000 people lost jobs and 10-20% of that comes from fisheries and agriculture. (On May 26th unemployment in the region exceeded 110 thousand.)

 

There is a variety of reconstructing plans, including reconstruction of local industries and the use of energy, but many of them are defective. The government has passed a 4 trillion yen($50 billion) supplementary budget for clearing the debris and other urgent tasks. The ideas of special economic zones in the region and deregulation in various sectors are discussed, which are expected to bring private investment and young people into highly-protected areas such as agriculture. But Yasushi Harada, a senior economist at The Tokyo Foundation, a think-tank, points out that the recovery of private assets of fishermen and farmers should be more important than such things. In fact, many of reconstructing plans miss that point although they show some ways to create jobs for disaster-victims, including relocating collectively for job opportunities, creating new local industries and reforming education to change jobs, all of which indicate a breakaway from the primary industry. Mr Harada also says that financial investment is too much, showing that the government and the Ministry of Finance plan to raise tax.

 

The third cause of worry for disaster victims is related to the second: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It aims to bring free-trade and competition to various areas from agriculture, forestry, fisheries to health by deregulation that allows private companies to enter those markets. But many people, including mayors, farmers, fishermen, doctors and experts, oppose TPP. One poll conducted by Japan Agricultural Newspaper shows73% of 638 local mayors were against it while it was only Tokyo where the majority approved TPP; almost all of the mayors in Tohoku opposed it.

 

True, appropriate deregulation is needed. For example, Japanese forestry has been sluggish for a long time. To stop it, the government is so far surprisingly doing well to modernise the market. Japanese rice is highly protected, sending its price higher. A proposal for agricultural policy reform from The Tokyo Foundation says, “the right policy is that farmers receive direct payment from the government to maximise external economy effects after entering into free-trade to increase profits as much as possible”.

 

However, TPP has a negative aspect to national interest. Compared with other developed countries, Japan is dangerously low in the amount of grain production. Based on this, Hideyuki Sekioka, an expert on American-Japanese relations, maintains that Japanese paddy farmers should continue to be protected like those in countries such as Britain and France. Japanese private forests need urgent protection, too. While land is public property in other developed countries, it is not in Japan with private rights over land strongest in the world. Because of the decline in the forest industry in the last few decades, the management of private forest became sloppy. Now Chinese investors are showing their interest in them. Private forests in Tohoku are relatively managed well, but there are still ones whose ownership is unclear there.

 

What’s more, there is a fear that reconstructing is subject to the central and foreign governments. Local people should take a leading role in rebuilding their disaster-hit industries, but that is unlikely to happen. After all, TPP and the U.S.-Japan Regulatory Reform and Competition Policy Initiative are “two sides of the same coin”: they bring most benefits to American multinational companies at the expense of national interest. America pushes Japan to endorse TPP anyway. Ron Kirk, the head of Office of United States Trade Representative, urged the Japanese government to go ahead with TPP the other day. That may explain why regaining private property of local people in disaster-hit area is not included in many reconstructing plans.

 

Dr. Tetsuro Ishii claims in Mainichi Shimbun that TPP will do serious damage not only to local agriculture but also to medical system as a whole in the wake of disaster. With aging and depopulation, local hospitals in Tohoku are short of doctors, which was partly caused by deregulation in medical industry demanded by the past American initiative.

 

In the worst case scenario, TPP will destroy not only local communities but Japan as a whole. People in Tohoku have co-existed with Nature. For example, they traditionally make straw dolls to pray for good health. As Mr Sekioka fears, reform in agriculture threatens to break up agricultural cooperative as well as such traditional values. It will be a mistake to put more emphasis on free-market and competition than on the recognition of connectedness with Nature and co-operation.

 

History suggests that Tohoku should avoid trusting the central government too much. This region was once called Ezo with a bit of racism and caution. When the Meiji reformation was taking place, the region backed the old regime and fought to the end against the new government only to defeat and suffer unfair treatment. After the nuclear accident at Fukushima, there seems to be a growing sense of anger and disillusionment with the government among people in the region. For Tohoku, which has served to provide staples for the country, participation in TPP is like adding fuel to the fire. It should be careful with the central governement that has deceived many times in the past.

 

The best cure for illness of disaster-victims is to solve social and economic issues based on the sense of solidarity and mission that a growing number of local people have. These spirits will keep illness at bay. Mrs Oba thinks, “to bring out the individual healing power is important”. Miyagi is due to finalise its reconstructing plan by September, but the governor of the cash-stripped prefecture, Yoshihiro Murai, is likely to proceed with free-market reform in the face of opposition from local fishermen. “There’s always pain when there’s revolution”, he told to The Economist. A determined reformist he may be, but the governor is like a doctor who forgets that medicine is a benevolent art.

Sumo In The Wake Of Disaster: Marginalised

This post examines the absence of Japan’s national sport from the mainstream media

 

These days it is not hard to see that sumo is losing its status as Japan’s national sport. The deadly earthquake and tsunami happened on March 11th, and some other sports held charity matches in an effort to raise money and encourage victims of the disaster. Compared with them, sumo looks quiet. Japanese mass media appears to push it away.

 

In the aftermath of the disaster, some sports stars have shown great performances. There was a football charity match last month, which Kazuyoshi Miura, the king of football in Japan, played and scored a dramatic goal. Some golfers such as Ryo Ishikawa and Ai Miyasato took an immediate action. Although they had trouble deciding when to start a new season, Japanese baseball teams turned out to be successful in providing fans with exciting opening matches; with a great encouragement of people in Tohoku region, Tohoku Rakuten‘s Hisashi Iwakuma, a pitcher, was brave and calm enough to win the game.

 

But sumo is quiet so that rikishi, sumo wrestlers, look as if they voluntarily refrain from playing the game. The big difference between sumo and the other sports is the way the media covers the game. Sumo does not get as much coverage as other sports do. It is not only because there is not a tournament until May. Nowadays people have more bad stories on sumo than good ones; the wrestlers tend to be portrayed negatively.

 

The reason for the diminishing presence of sumo is a series of scandals. And the underlying cause of scandals is money: bad wrestlers have no sense of money. Salaries are different depending on the place in the ranking list. The gap between the top and the bottom is great; that makes illegal gambling and match-fixing attractive to some of wrestlers at the bottom and stable masters. Indeed, many of those who were involved with the illegal betting are young. At the same time, some top officials are keen to protect their vested interests. Nor does the relationship with yakuza, Japanese gangs, go away.

 

To remove “pus” from sumo, reform is under way. If modernised, sumo wrestlers may improve their money habits. After all, modernisation is about introducing free market: modern sports such as football and baseball make billions of money. That may allow sumo to become more commercialised. Thus, wrestlers have to learn more and more about money.

 

Mainstream media, including foreign correspondents, seem to be backing the change. That is part of reason why NHK, the national broadcaster, cancelled to air both a test meet in May and the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament.

That is a wrong decision. There are two reasons why. First, NHK should treat sumo fairly like other sports. Not all sumo wrestlers are bad; some of them are raising money and offered foods for charity. One stable managed to raise over three hundred million yen. Those are good reasons for the televised media coverage they deserve.

 

Second, the main reason for the cancellation may have less to do with sumo than with money. Because it does not pay the Japan Sumo Association the broadcasting fees, NHK can save money. That is helpful for the broadcaster as it pays billions of yen to The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) from its license fee, which makes the broadcaster nervous about its finance.

 

But, with taxes and advertisement fees in decline, MIC and commercial television are also financially struggling, let alone the cost of starting digital terrestrial broadcasting. For that reason, they are targeting NHK’s license fee. As a result, NHK cuts spending. That may be why it decided to stop broadcasting the sumo game.

 

Two executives of mainstream media are to blame as well. Katsuji Ebisawa, a former NHK’s controversial president, was appointed as the chairman of The Yokozuna Promotion Committee in 2007. His appointment was arranged by Tsuneo Watanabe, the president and chief editor of Yomiuri Shimbun, who had taken up the post before and is exercising his powerful influence on MIC to cause trouble to NHK. Over the past years the position turned into an honorary post for them: two of them were criticised for being superficial. Thus it is doubtful if they worked hard to improve sumo. Did they order private broadcasting companies to bash sumo? A sumo expert thinks that sumo has been made a scapegoat for Japan’s sluggish economy and dysfunctional politics to avert people’s eyes from them.

 

It is a pity that those who are working hard and deserve credit for helping the victims end up being deprived of playing the tournament. Sumo reportedly lost over 1.6 billion yen (over $19 million) by cancelling the Spring Grand Tournament, let alone its income from television, which was as much as 450 million yen ($5.5 million). Nor did wrestlers get pay.

 

Critics of sumo’s modernisation say that sumo should stick to tradition. True, it has been a sport and a show business for hundreds of years. But the aspect of Shinto ritual is fundamental to sumo. While modern sports emphasise competition, it does not quite fit sumo. Nor is it quite a fair game. Think of physical sizes of sumo wrestlers, which range from small to extremely large. Nothing is more important than the sumo etiquette: politeness and respect for each other. It is based on spiritual seeking or bushido, the code of honour and morals of samurai.

 

After all, sumo needs meaning. It should redefine its role and purpose in the contemporary society. If each of wrestlers has a meaningful aim and shares it with others, they can resist temptations of the outer world and can change their minds. Under the new governance, sumo should include that. And the media should stop bashing wrestlers.

 

Education is also the key to regaining its reputation. Physical punishment should be separated from hard workout. The former is violence, and the latter physical and mental training. Critics are pushing sumo stables to reform the way they train young wrestlers. But they should find out why the system has been sustained until today. To make young wrestlers realise their social role is needed by using the carrot and stick well. Strike while the iron is hot, before it is too late.

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