What Sumo wrestling tells us about integration
immigrants need a concrete culture to assimilate into
What can watching obese men in diaper thongs wrestle each other in one of London’s most prestigious venues teach us about immigration, integration and culture?
I bet some of you Brits flinched when you read the line above. I am referring, of course, to the Sumo tournament that was taking place in London last week. I was lucky enough to be invited by a TV presenter friend because the tickets sold out within hours of going live.
Why would the Brits flinch? Because I am being rude about a deeply traditional sport of an ancient culture known for its dignity, humility and self-respect.
If Sumo were British, of course, this is precisely how the Brits would speak of their most ancient sport. But I love them because of their self-hatred, not despite of it.
It’s not a blemish-free tradition. Sumo has a dark side as well. Back in 2007, a 17-year-old trainee died after being beaten up by 3 of his seniors, at the instructions of his stablemaster. There are scandals of match fixing and harassment, like in every sport. People will cite a combination of the rigid culture that rejects modernity and the social background of the wrestlers, many of whom have received little education. But we don’t see that as Westerners.
Some more facts about Sumo:
They live a monk-like life of zero freedom (until they are elite): Teen rookies live in stables, wake before dawn, train till exhaustion, and spend the rest of the day cooking/cleaning for seniors. No dating, no marriage, no smartphone, until you make the top two divisions.
99% grind, 1% paid: Only sekitori (roughly the top 10%) get a salary. Ballpark monthly pay: ~¥1.1m for Juryo up to ~¥3m (20K USD) for Yokozuna. Everyone below that? Room, board, tiny stipends, basically nothing.
Estimated life expectancy for ex-rikishi hovers around the mid-60s, far below Japanese men overall. Post-career, many face diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, joint wreckage, and often a rapid health decline once the daily training stops.
Most join at 15 and leave in their early 30s with few skills. Only a small handful stay in the sport as coaches. Many scramble into chanko restaurants, security jobs, caregiving, or odd media gigs, often starting from zero.
Sumo is living Shinto theatre: salt purification, shrine-style roof over the ring, sacred ring-entering ceremonies. Wrestlers wear topknots and kimono in public; not allowed to drive, they have to cycle everywhere; they’re walking symbols of premodern Japan.
The professional ring excludes women. In 2018, as a mayor collapsed mid-event, female medics were told over the PA to get off the ring while they were saving his life, a national shock that forced apologies and renewed calls for reform.
Last week, thousands of others and I were completely transfixed in the Royal Albert Hall, where over 40 of Japan’s elite maku-uchi rikishi (wrestlers) competed in a five-day tournament, bringing with them the 1500-year legacy of Sumo. I was lucky to be invited by a TV presenter friend, who himself was invited by someone who had tickets in the ‘boxes’, the exclusive areas on the higher part of the hall. The whole place was transformed and they were even serving Japanese food: sushi, wagyu carpaccio, braised ox cheeks and perfectly steamed white fish. Oh, and of course, they were serving Asahi!
The matches themselves are like no other martial art. They last from seconds to a couple of minutes, and the optics of watching two half-naked men of a body type rarely on public display use their full force on each other till one of them touches the floor, or falls out of the dojo, is an eye-bath.
The 45-minute ceremony tests the Western audience’s patience, as it is not visually interesting enough for people hooked on scrolling. It got me thinking about Japanese culture and its stubborn homogeneity and inflexibility over the decades.
Like much of Japan, Sumo is an almost impenetrable tradition for foreigners. In Japan, they limit each sumo stable to just one foreign-born wrestler. To do so, they have to commit to learning Japanese and take up a Japanese name. At the tournament last week, 10 of the 42 top-division wrestlers were non-Japanese: from Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine.
I did not realise that any of them were not Japanese until Ukrainian 21-year-old Aonishiki came out and the commentator mentioned he was a refugee who arrived to Japan as a teenager, fleeing the war, alone with no family and no knowledge of Japanese. He is now well on his way to becoming a Sumo champion.
Had I not heard it in the earphone commentary, Aonishiki (his adopted Japanese name) I would have assumed he was Japanese. That's how seamlessly he blended with his surroundings.
So Aonishiki is an impeccably assimilated immigrant. But he had something concrete to assimilate into. In the UK, if an immigrant wanted to put equal effort she would find in her horror that earnestly adopting and embracing traditions and symbols of British is mocked by the very elites who most benefited from them. On the other hand, Britain makes no requirements of immigrants to imitate the locals. Even asking for English proficiency is something that has only recently been asked of. The UK is, in that respect, extremely open.
Do we think Japan is a racist country?
That was a trick question, of course it is, as are all countries to one degree or another. But Asian ones are certainly some of the more racist ones. Structural discrimination is real in Japan. Foreigners are often refused housing, turned away from some hotels, or offered limited job opportunities. Ethnic minorities face prejudice or stigma, though legal equality exists on paper. Some employers expect foreign workers to stay temporarily, regardless of skill or language ability. In media and advertising, stereotypes persist in ways the Brits would find racist, from “funny foreigner” TV characters to beauty standards emphasising light skin and European features. Many Japanese don’t see this as “racism,” but as maintaining cultural harmony or avoiding awkwardness, which can make it harder to confront directly in the way we are used to in English speaking countries.
A review of Japanese public-opinion literature found that around 60% of the public tend to hold negative attitudes toward the acceptance of immigrants. A 2017 survey found that roughly one in three foreign residents (33%) reported experiencing discrimination, such as being refused housing because of their background.
On Xitter and other hell sites, Japan is being portrayed as the pinnacle of civilisation in terms of lifestyle. There is also a disturbing genre of race war slop that shows foreign tourists, usually American and often black, being anti-social for social media clout on Japanese public transport and public spaces.
Right wing xitter would say that they would love for the UK to be like Japan, but the country is literally dying out. Japan’s situation is severe. In 2024, the country logged just ~720,000 births while deaths hit about 1.6 million, meaning a net population drop of ~900,000. The race slop warriors would say that they don’t care. The country is richer and even though people are not having enough kids they at least get to enjoy their country in peace without what they see as a cultural, aesthetic and moral assault. But because the UK is not rich, and our infrastructure has enjoyed nothing like the quality of investment Japan has, we are in a bigger rut despite our more favourable demographics.
According to the race sloppers, one of the reasons British people are not having more kids is because immigration puts pressure on resources and makes ‘natives’ less likely to have kids. How does that explain pristine Japan’s march towards extinction?
I get it, they will say they would rather be Japanese in Japan than British in Britain. Cool, do you think the rigid culture has anything to do with people checking out of procreation? Do you think it is a mystery why, in a country that in 2019 acquitted a father for repeatedly raping his underage daughter, women who are legally no longer required to choose between starvation and marriage chose to avoid the latter?
I was fully consumed by the sumo wrestlers last week, and impressed by the valiant effort of the Ukrainian refugee to assimilate into a country that won’t even give him a passport. But in the end, as beautiful as the cherry blossom trees look in the Spring, and as grateful as I am to Marie Kondo for the life-changing home organising methods I use today, I wouldn’t swap them for the Brits. Many divorcing couples had beautifully decorated homes.
But I will say this, the Ukrainian refugee looked so well-adjusted because he had something to assimilate into. Sumo is a very expensive sport that requires investment and upkeep. The UK has scrapped public investment in culturally significant landmarks and traditions at every opportunity. I am all for immigrants integrating more, but we need to give them something that we all agree is worthy of preservation first.
If Japan has sumo and cherry blossoms, we could just as easily have our folk music, our local pubs, our regional dialects, our village greens, our brass bands and coastal piers. We could make St. George’s Day actually mean something, revive community fairs, keep youth theatres and brass bands alive, and treat our football clubs, libraries, and allotments as civic institutions, not leftovers. Culture doesn’t stay alive by nostalgia alone- it needs maintenance, funding, and a bit of national pride that isn’t just cheap flag-waving (though I will do cheap too when the mood strikes). If we gave half as much care to our cultural soil as Japan does to its traditions, perhaps we’d have something firmer for newcomers to grow roots in.
PS, I will be posting some videos from the Sumo tournament on my Instagram.
I love the way you framed this nuanced topic through the lens of sumo. Great article! Lots to think about
At least the Brits are still waxing strong with their Monarchs and Monarchy, even if it appears breaking apart at the seams and seems more exclusionary than inclusive. No?