Following revelations in January, Tate-gyoji Shikimori Inosuke served a 3 basho suspension, and has now resigned from the Japan Sumo Association. Inosuke was accused of (and admitted to) sexually assaulting a junior gyoji who was only in his teens. To complicate matters, Inosuke was drunk at the time.
Following his resignation on Wednesday, sumo will have no tate-gyoji on the banzuke for Nagoya, which is a first in this century.
thought this might be coming but still – this century – wow (i know we’re only 18 deep but still) for tate gyoji this is pretty big
So he kissed the guy and fondled his chest… was he pushed off? Asked to stop? Was the junior ref underage? If the answer to all these questions is no I don’t see what he did wrong.
Yes, he was underage and besides that getting so hammered you don’t know what you’re doing isn’t going to look good whatever you end up doing
I haven’t seen any indication that the victim was underage.
But harassing someone over whom you have authority, while drunk, is never a good thing.
Underage by Japan standards. Not US, I think.
So long as they don’t promote the guy who just stood there on the Dohyo when Hokotofuji got hurt I’ll be happy. Also, is it just me or did a few of the Gyoji’s demonstrate some pretty terrible ring sense this Basho?
no, not just you! and fully agree re gyoji who didn’t act re Hokutofuji!
It’s a cautionary tale, about the dangers of unfettered access to Awamori. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awamori
A second lesson is that even the most seasoned gyoji cannot keep up with rikishi drink-for-drink – in competitive drinking, body mass matters.
Hakuho was quoted to the effect that the Shikimori Inosuke is not gay, but “does love his alcohol”. (loosely translated and from memory)
By most accounts, he got falling-down-drunk, was operating in a black-out condition, and fooling around. However, in Japan excessive drinking is much more tolerated than in US. While sex with minors is even more inflammatory than in the US, and the age of consent is higher in Japan.
By US standards, this case is more a well-known alcohol problem than a pattern of sexual predation. In Japan the drinking bit would have gone unreported, except for touching the teenager. At least I think that’s how it goes.
What I’m wondering, is a san’yaku gyōji allowed to judge a yokuzuna bout?
Or will the NSK have to hasten the promotion of a new tate-gyōji?
Kandayu, a sanyaku gyoji, has been juding all yokozuna bouts for multiple tournaments now. This changes nothing in regards to that.
As for promotion to tate gyoji, I’m of the personal opinion that Kandayu isn’t a very good gyoji, but I suppose if they really want to promote somebody it would be him.
Thx :-)
I’m wondering how they cannot promote Kandayu. They declined to promote Shikimori Inosuke (for whatever reasons he was considered unworthy) so now we have both tate gyoji positions open.
If Kandayu is also unworthy, that illustrates a problem with the system of promotion by seniority, but its hard to imagine an effort to reform the promotion criteria. Seems that the path of least resistance is to promote Kandayu.
Part of the reason for not promoting Inosuke to Shonosuke was that there’s a pretty large age gap between him and his last predecessor. Even now he’s only 58, and he’s been Inosuke since 2013. (The last Shonosuke retired in 2015, so he’d have been 55 if they had promoted him at the time.)
That’s very unusual, normally it’s only a couple of years at most between one gyoji and the next-most senior one. If he had been a slam-dunk candidate they probably wouldn’t have had a problem with the idea of him filling the very top position for 10 years, but obviously they’ve had some reservations. He still would have become Shonosuke eventually, if this scandal hadn’t intervened.
The problem with the four sanyaku-kaku gyoji is pretty much the same, they’re all relatively young still. Kandayu is also 58 – actually a couple of months older than the retiring Inosuke and was going to get stuck behind him until retirement age, not anymore of course. Tamajiro, Yodo and Shotaro are 57, 56 and 54 respectively.
I reckon they’ll promote Kandayu to Inosuke in the next regularly scheduled urakata ranking revisions, just to have a tate-gyoji again (but without making it look like an emergency appointment), but he won’t be moving up to Shonosuke for at least a couple of years either.