In her novel My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozeki clearly supports the blending of cultures as evidenced by a number of things. Cross-cultural families were often pinpointed by Jane Takagi-Little as she looked for families to showcase on “My American Wife!” One example is the Beaudroux family, who adopted 11 Korean children and brought them to Louisiana. Also lending to the impression of support is Akiko’s ultimate decision for her life and that of her child. It was through the influence of an American that Akiko finally gained the courage to leave her husband in Japan.
There are some institutions, however, that see the mixing of cultures to be extremely threatening. Japanese professional sumo wrestling is one of those institutions, as is shown in the documentary Sumo: East and West. The sport of sumo wrestling remained very closed for a very long time. It wasn’t until the 1960s that a Hawaiian sumo wrestler went to Japan to join the sport. As more non-Japanese began to participate in the sport, the sport began to close its doors even further in order to maintain the sense of tradition that is a large part of sumo.
Choosing to be a professional sumo wrestler in Japan is truly choosing a way of life as the wrestlers live, eat, and practice together. As the documentary shows, it is difficult for many Americans to adapt themselves to the tradition and lifestyle they become a part of when they travel to Japan. Not only must a wrestler speak Japanese, they must also meet requirements of height, weight, and hair length. There are rules to follow within their stables-groups that they live and practice with-and, as a Hawaiian former pro sumo wrestler shares, disobeying leads to punishment. The closing of the sport has been described as leading to “the Japanization of foreign wrestlers” rather than the “internationalization of sumo.”
Much about the developing circuit of amateur sumo wrestling is disturbing to the established professional Japanese circuit of wrestlers. While professional sumo does not allow a woman to so much as touch the ring in which the wrestlers fight for fear of rendering it impure, amateur sumo is allowing women to compete. This is just one example of the type of thing that causes professional sumo to continually tighten its ranks in order to preserve its tradition.
While Ozeki’s novel supports the preservation of tradition, it also encourages sharing traditions and allowing them to blend together to create something new. Professional sumo wrestling takes the opposite approach: watchfully screening its participants in order to keep the sport as pure as the dohyo they wrestle on.
–Heather Mead
