Cracks in the Moral Economy of Sumo: Beasts of Burden, Sport Heroes, National Icons and Living Gods in Disgrace

Abstract

Sumo, Japan's vernacular form of wrestling is so strikingly enmeshed in a distinctive cosmology of symbols, performances and narratives that the association with the traditional and the national seems to come inevitably, if not naturally. Yet many of the eye-catching elements are inventions from early modern or more recent times. Recent scandals demonstrated that the world of sumo is threatened to be torn apart between its conceptualisations as either a national craft or a modern sport. This article argues that the sense of crisis is an outcome of professional sumo's struggles in wrestling with multiple modernities. Sumo, on the one hand, is firmly embedded within the market rationality of sports as a modern institution and a consumer spectacle; on the other hand, as a self-declared sustainer of national virtues and traditions, it is deeply entrenched within a moral economy defying the market principles of fairness, surplus value and freedom of choice. Both aspects are related to Japan's encounters with modernity and the way sumo has been adjusted to its changing surroundings. Cracks appear where the modernity of the market colludes with the modernity of the nation and offer insight into a moral economy predating the invention of sumo as a sport.