Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

It must be summer, cuz you’re never around (a good line stolen from the Fountains of Wayne). But I protest: I really am around. You just wouldn’t know it from the paucity of blog updates lately. I’m juggling a large number of rather rather bulky and wobbly projects these days.

I did manage to catch some of the baseball All Star Game last night. When I heard the news yesterday morning about former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, I had to smile at the timing. Back in his heyday in the 1970s and 80s, if the Yankees didn’t make it to the World Series in a particular year Steinbrenner would always pull some stunt right in the middle of the series (fire his manager, berate his team captain, whatever) to steal the headlines away from the teams still playing for the championship. So of course the man would pass away on the day of the All Star Game, assuring that all the coverage would focus not on the mid-season classic, but on the Boss.

Yankees’ fans clearly held the man in great affection. As a Twins’ fan and therefore a congenital Yankees’ hater, I generally despised him and everything he stood for as a baseball owner. But as several tributes I’ve read point out, wouldn’t it have been great to have a Twins’ owner as committed to winning as Steinbrenner was with the Yankees? Anyhow, I imagine he is up in heaven now (or, given the Damn Yankees thematic here, down there below), trying to rehire Billy Martin.

The very odd Nagoya sumo tournament got underway Sunday. Something like a quarter of the wrestlers in the top two divisions are suspended or banned due to the gambling/yakuza scandals, and NHK has gotten all holy about this and is refusing to televise the bouts live. Yokozuna Hakuho will no doubt take the title, as usual–on Tuesday he broke his own personal record of 32 consecutive wins. But with so many of the usual faces sitting this one out, the tournament should generate some unusual results. For starters, it’s a terrific opportunity for lower ranked wrestlers to leapfrog up the rankings.

Other than that, what have we been up to? Last Saturday night, we headed downtown to catch the Grant Park Orchestra play a free concert in Millenium Park under the energetic baton of female conductor Xian Zhang. We liked the program very much, as did Tribune critic John von Rhein and Sun-Times critic Andrew Patner. They played a piece by the contemporary composer Chen Yi, Prokofiev’s “Suite from Love for Three Oranges,” and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 in D Major. Didn’t mind the raindrops or the firetruck sirens hardly at all. It must be summer.

The powers-that-be in the world of sumo have backed themselves into a corner. The artificially inflated ethical standards that were invoked to dethrone the foreign yokozuna Asashoryu now prove unattainable for the Japanese-born wrestlers and managers. In particular, the holier-than-thou attitude that developed over the past few years has now inadvertently provoked a major piling on in the mass media at the latest scandal, which involves the newly exposed gambling habits of dozens of current and former wrestlers.

Gambling by athletes is undoubtedly a problem. Given that it is illegal, it necessarily involves them with unsavory characters (in Japan, that means the yakuza), and it opens up the potential of players falling deeply in debt and throwing matches in return for clearing the slate. The lifetime ban of Pete Rose in American baseball for betting on the sport in which he played a central role was entirely appropriate, even if no evidence emerged that he attempted to rig the outcomes of games.

On this basis, some of the wrestlers named in current media reports deserve punishment, perhaps even banning. But a witch-hunt atmosphere of hysteria has now set in, and even wrestlers who occasionally bet in private hanafuda card games between wrestlers are being singled out for media pillorying. The Nagoya tournament is supposed to get underway in a couple of weeks, but now that is up in the air. Will it be canceled? If it goes forward, will NHK broadcast it? Will ozeki Kotomitsuki be banned for life from the sport?

There’s an old adage: be careful what you wish for. For years, cranky sumo observers in Japan upset with foreign dominance yearned for the sport to be “cleaned up.” Congratulations, folks: your wish has come true. I only hope the sport survives it.

We spent yesterday afternoon at the Field Museum of Natural History, taking in the “Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age” exhibit. The centerpiece artifact is Lyuba, the one-month-old mammoth discovered frozen below the permafrost in northern Russia in 2007. She is remarkably well preserved for a creature some 40,000 years old: she is even cute in a baby animal sort of way. But as I gawked I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what separated this scientific exhibit from, say, the curios that drew crowds in 1840s and 50s New York to P.T. Barnum’s Museum. Well, it’s something to do with the kids on a summer afternoon, and it’s air conditioned.

(Image source)

If I were in England this weekend, I’d be trying to worm my way into the Glastonbury Festival. Among many others, one Raymond Douglas Davies will be taking the stage for a set on Sunday. A preview article notes the role the Kinks had in establishing this annual music festival back in 1970:

In 1970, founder and dairy farmer Michael Eavis decided to hold a music event and booked the Kinks for 500 pounds but, when they failed to show, got Marc Bolan instead.

Typical. Ray is a little better about these things nowadays, so presumably he will actually play his scheduled set.

Tonight, the plan is to catch the fabulous jazz chanteuse Dee Alexander in a free concert out on the Midway Plaisance. Summertime, and the living’s easy….

The current Summer Sumo tournament in Tokyo has reached the halfway point. It’s been insanely busy around my house, so I’ve managed to watch just a couple of days–and then only by using the fast-forward button judiciously. It’s not the best way to watch sumo, since you lose touch with the ritual pacing that is so central to the sport’s charm. But skipping past all the time between bouts also allows you to condense an entire day’s worth of top division matches, which in real time takes ninety minutes, into about fifteen minutes.

The most poignant fact about the current tournament was reported in the press (Japanese-language only) just before it got underway. If you’ve ever visited the Kokugikan to watch matches, you’ve seen the grand array of enormous (3.17 by 2.28 meters) portraits of past champions hanging around the upper tier of the arena. There are 32 in all, and with each tournament they take down the oldest and replace it with a portrait of whomever won the most recent title. As a result, with six tournaments a year, the display gives you a nice snapshot of the last five-plus years in the sport’s history. Here’s an article about the portraits.

(Image source)

Just prior to the current tournament, to make room for Hakuho’s portrait celebrating his victory in Osaka this past March, they took down the portrait of Kaio commemorating his championship in the Autumn 2004 tournament. As a result, right now of the 32 portraits hanging in the Kokugikan only one is of a Japanese wrestler–Tochiazuma, celebrating his upset win in the 2006 New Year tournament. The rest are all Mongolians–with the exception of one that portrays Bulgarian ozeki Kotooshu. It’s all enough to make a nationalist weep.

It isn’t going to change this time around. Mongolian yokozuna Hakuho has things firmly in hand so far with an 8-0 record. The brand new ozeki Baruto (from Estonia) has displayed hesitant, sloppy sumo, but has managed to hang in there at 7-1. Everyone else, including all of the domestic wrestlers, is basically mincemeat at this point. The closest thing there is to a Great Japanese Hope is sekiwake Kisenosato, who has a decent 5-3 mark.

If you were to push the fast-forward button to skip through the last five years of sumo, make sure you don’t blink. Otherwise you’ll miss your one chance to see a Japanese wrestler hoist the championship banner and trophy. The way things look, your next chance to see that sight might be several years away….

Tokyo newspapers are reporting that former yokozuna Asashoryu, who retired in disgrace earlier this year after winning the January sumo tournament, was part of an official Mongolian delegation that visited Pyongyang earlier this week. Huh?

Full story here (Japanese-language only).

Then again, I’ve just discovered that Wikipedia has a length entry on “Mongolia-North Korea Relations.” I quote:

Unofficially, North Korean visitors show significant interest in studying Mongolia’s economic reforms; according to the Mongolian side, North Koreans see them as non-threatening because they are a fellow non-Western country and went through similar experiences under communism. Mongolia’s efforts to introduce free-market capitalism to North Korea also have a component of self-interest. The Trans-Siberian Railway, an essential link in the potential continuous rail transit route from South Korea to Europe, passes through Mongolia; North Korean economic liberalisation which allowed South Korean shipping to pass through its borders would remove the major stumbling block to such a route, providing economic benefits for Mongolia.

You learn something new everyday….

[Updated on May 16, 2010 to replace broken links]

I’ve just managed to catch up on my sumo, watching the video of last Sunday’s final day of matches from the Osaka tournament. They certainly saved the best for last: ozeki Harumafuji threw everything he had into a fierce bid to stop yokozuna Hakuho’s drive for a perfect 15-0 record in the final match of the basho. Hakuho prevailed in the end to take home the trophy in his first tournament as sole yokozuna, but I’m glad that I picked Harumafuji to win the bout in fantasy sumo anyhow. (It helps that I got my eighth victory and therefore a winning record for the tournament as a whole that day, despite my predicting an upset loss by Hakuho).

The big story of the tournament, though, was sekiwake Baruto. Coming into the tournament, it was public knowledge that 13 or more wins would earn him promotion to ozeki, the sport’s second highest rank. He finished at 14-1, knocking off all the existing ozeki and losing only to the yokozuna. It was clear from the start that something had changed in Baruto: Estonian by birth and the first blonde to reach the top division in sumo, he has always had a charming disposition, his face frequently lighting up with a smile that reminded me of illustrations of gentle giants from childhood picture books. The goofy grin was gone in Osaka: Baruto showed a serious visage throughout, reflecting a new seriousness of purpose. He also unleashed an expanded range of techniques and remarkable power. I only saw him smile once the whole tournament: as he walked down the back corridors on the last day after Hakuho’s victory over Harumafuji had eliminated his title hopes.

(Photo source: FourTildes)

The promotion council will meet tomorrow to make Baruto’s promotion to ozeki official. I hope we continue to see the new serious Baruto in the coming tournaments–but I also hope we’ll see that smile again someday, as he holds up the trophy for his first tournament win. I suspect that will happen before the end of 2010.

The sumo tournament in Osaka has reached the midway point, and as expected sole yokozuna Hakuho (7-0) has dominated. But two promising rikishi have also stepped up to take advantage of the opening created by yokozuna Asashoryu’s sudden retirement last month: ozeki Harumafuji, the former Ama and a disappointment since his promotion to ozeki a couple of years back, is now 7-0, as is sekiwake Baruto, who could win promotion to ozeki with a championship in this tournament. Baruto in particular has been impressive: he just looks much more serious about things this time around, his goofy grin a thing of the past. Down in the maegashira ranks, Tokitenku is also 7-0, but that’s just a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

In the meanwhile, spring has arrived in Chicago (never mind those snowflakes falling outside the window as I write these words). I celebrate by listening to Minnesota Twins spring training games in the afternoon at my office. I’m pretty optimistic about the coming season, despite noises being made by local White Sox fans….

In the category, “It’s bloody well about time”: Universal betting on lower prices to boost CD sales.

Ray Davies continues to wow them on his current tour. MSN.com reports that “Ray Davies rules on second night of SXSW.”

The coming week should be a hectic one for me. I’m in Philadelphia on Monday and Tuesday for the NCC 3D conference, then up to Princeton for the “Rethinking ‘Hihyo’: Postwar Literary Criticism and Beyond” workshop, then back down to Philadelphia on Thursday for the 2010 AAS Annual Meeting.

I leave you with the late Alex Chilton. I saw him play with the reunited Big Star seven or eight years ago at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus. It was a joyous occasion, especially when they covered The Kinks’ “‘Till the End of the Day.” Ray Davies dedicated that song to Chilton in his performance at SXSW this week (where Chilton had been scheduled to play) and spoke from the stage about how Chilton had visited him in the hospital after he was shot in New Orleans. A great songwriter and a wonderful voice: so long, Mr. Chilton.

On the dark side, tomorrow we take our first step into that gray new world known as post-Asashoryu sumo. Yokozuna Hakuho is the prohibitive favorite to take home the title in Osaka (has it really been a year since I was there in person for Day 8 last March, watching Asashoryu knock off Baruto in a fierce match?). Ozeki Kotooshu seems the only possible threat to Hakuho’s championship, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Kotooshu over the years, it’s that he shrinks like a banana souffle anytime he gets close to something good. Perhaps his recent marriage will change things, but my money’s on Hakuho (ho-hum: the subtle sound of a middle-aged man yawning).

Even darker, this is the week we learned the Minnesota Twins may have to live without relief ace, Joe Nathan. There are some viable replacement candidates already on the roster, including the marvelous Pat Neshek, back after an injury-related break of nearly two years, and Francisco Liriano has been tantalizingly good so far. But the loss of Nathan has Twins’ fans literally offering up parts of their own bodies in hopes of resuscitating Nathan’s pitching arm.

On the bright side, I’m taking Satoko to see Ray Davies in concert tonight at the Riviera. The last show we saw by him here in Chicago, a little more than a year ago, was transcendent, and reports from previous gigs on the current tour are quite positive. Here’s a little taste of what’s in store for me:

Former yokozuna Akebono performs Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” in this commercial for the Japanese re-broadcast of the “Glee” television series. I don’t know about you, but I stopped believing about ten seconds into the thing….

The great Monogolian yokozuna Asashoryu has announced his retirement. Just a week after his victory in the New Years tournament gave him his 25th title and third place on the career championship record list, he stepped down to take responsibility for an ugly, but still murky, incident that took place on the sixth day of the tournament, when he got into a late-night drunken brawl that is the subject of an ongoing police investigation.

It’s an incredibly sad moment for this sumo fan. Asashoryu at his prime was one of the two or three greatest sumo wrestlers ever, combining astonishing technique with a terrifying determination to win. The look in his eyes just before a match, especially a match against a difficult opponent, was something fierce. He was also, however, always daunted by internal demons and seems to have been battling depression for the last few years, though it has never been announced as such. On top of that was the extra pressures he faced as a foreign sumo wrestler: he became the sumo wrestler the tabloids loved to hate. Early on in his career, he was able to transform that hostility into a source of energy, but lately it seems only to have worn him down.

He was clearly past his peak, and yet he is only 29 and his victory in the most recent tournament demonstrated that he still had some terrific sumo left in him. It’s an awful waste. Moreover, do you know how boring sumo is going to be without him? In terms of talent, personality, and charisma, none of the other wrestlers can touch him. So long, Asashoryu, and thanks for a truly thrilling ride over the past decade.