The 12-year-old already weighs 230 lb. (105 kg). He has breasts. His thighs chafe when he walks. All this is good news in Japan's sumo world, where excess flesh acts as indispensable armor in the sport's brief and brutish bouts. The older recruits at Saitama Sakae high school, which boasts the country's No. 1 sumo team, coddle the boy, passing him choice morsels during the intense, silent gorging that constitutes meals for these growing behemoths. After all, he is a child with an impressive lineage: his grandfather was a yokozuna, a member of the grand-champion echelon into which only 69 wrestlers have lumbered since 1789. For several hours each day, while other youths might be playing computer games or watching cartoons, the boy practices endless leg squats, sweeps the sand of the sumo ring into a divinely stipulated pattern and works on perfecting the glare he will need to intimidate his foes. But even the likes of this born-and-bred wrestling scion may not be enough to save the mighty sport of sumo.
More than any other athletic endeavor, sumo embodies the soul of Japan. The sport's museum in Tokyo explains the improbable importance of a rapid, nearly naked grapple in a sandpit: "According to Japanese legend the very origin of the Japanese race depended on the outcome of a sumo match." With a 1,500-year history that inextricably links sumo to the national religion, Shinto, it's no wonder tradition weighs heavily on the sport. Clad only in loincloths, their hair swept into topknots that were the peak of fashion 150 years ago, the wrestlers are supposed to serve as oversize poster boys for the ultimate Japanese virtues: dignity, honor, discipline and strength. "When we visit retirement homes, old people like to touch us and sometimes are brought to tears," says former wrestler Yoshinori Tashiro, who fought under the sumo name of Tououyama. "There's something spiritual about sumo."
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