| Adult and children sumo wrestlers at PR match | Music | 00:00 |
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| WILLACY: The big stars of Sumo are doing their best to make it all look like so much fun. They're sending themselves up and trying a little slapstick to engage the young, but like most PR stunts, it rings hollow. Sumo is an unrelenting discipline - so tough young Japanese are now turning their backs on it. The proud and grand tradition that's helped define the Japanese for a thousand years is in crisis. | 00:11 |
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| KEISHI ONOE: When I was a child we used to wrestle sumo at the park. | 00:46 |
| Keishi Onoe | These days, parents say it's dangerous to wrestle and so they stop their children playing sumo. | 00:59 |
| Sumo match | Music | 01:11 |
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| WILLACY: It's shrouded in secrecy, but we've been given a rare privilege, an opportunity to go inside this cloistered world and see the real lives of the men of Sumo. | 01:32 |
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| Music | 01:43 |
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| MURRAY JOHNSON: It's gruelling. It's like going to boot camp 365 days a year. It's a feudalistic lifestyle and once they start, you know, they're the scum. | 01:47 |
| Johnson. Super: | They're the dirt on the floor and they've just got to work their way through all that to reach a certain level, the highest that they can. | 01:57 |
| Wrestlers training | Music | 02:03 |
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| WILLACY: This is a sumo training stable, often described as a cross between a family home and a paramilitary organisation. | 02:07 |
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| Music | 02:15 |
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| WILLACY: Over the course of three months our cameras followed two very different wrestlers here, the giant Baruto and the teenager Shohei Iwasaki. At the end, we were left in no doubt that this sport makes demands no modern sport would contemplate, and in a modern world, those demands are too much for many to bear. | 02:20 |
| Wrestlers getting up in dark. Iwasaki wakes others | It's time to rise and shine at the Onoe stable in South Tokyo. First up is Shohei Iwasaki. It's his job to get his sometimes reluctant fellow wrestlers moving. | 02:49 |
| Iwasaki sweeps floor, cooks | Shohei Iwasaki must now begin his other chores. The budding sumo is just sixteen years old and this is his first year at the Onoe stable. Inside this closed world is a strict hierarchy and as the lowest of the low, Iwasaki is expected to cook and clean and serve and satisfy his fellow sumos' every need. | 03:20 |
| Baruto | BARUTO: If you are the youngest disciple you may be bullied and you have to do twice the duties compared with your seniors. Therefore I have to be strict with them. I want them to become strong like me. | 03:46 |
| Iwasaki on pushbike to grocery store | WILLACY: Shohei Iwasaki's only contact with the outside world is his daily ride to the grocery store. During this brief respite, he can taste the fresh air and chat with the shop owner about subjects other than sumo. SHOHEI IWASAKI: Sometimes I feel I want to go home. | 04:12 |
| Iwasaki | About six months ago I felt training and my work was too hard and I wanted to give up. | 04:37 |
| Iwasaki waters wrestling ring | WILLACY: Life inside the stable is controlled by a rigid set of rules and traditions. We weren't allowed to get any closer with our camera because the wrestling ring - known as the dohyo - is sacred and only sumos and their masters are allowed to set foot on it. | 04:55 |
| Iwasaki trains | It's here that Iwasaki's daily hell begins. And the punishment isn't just physical. | 05:17 |
| Stable master berating Iwasaki in the ring | KEISHI ONOE: You should learn at least one skill! How many days have you been doing this? Don't cry. Just do what I say. SHOHEI IWASAKI: Yes, I am sorry. | 05:34 |
| Keishi Onoe | KEISHI ONOE: He has the potential, but he is not showing his ability yet. If we lose our strictness, sumo will end. I think the most important way to teach our disciples is to convey our love. | 05:58 |
| Iwasaki trains | WILLACY: Keishi Onoe understands the pain of tough love. The stable master is a former sumo with nearly a thousand bouts under his belt. He's a no nonsense coach, and he's teaching the teenager the discipline needed to succeed in sumo. The product of a broken home, young Iwasaki came to Tokyo not out of love for sumo, but out of a desire to give his mother a better life. | 06:25 |
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| SHOHEI IWASAKI: I wanted to become a strong sumo to return my mother's kindness. | 06:56 |
| Iwasaki | I want to take the burden from her shoulders because she's had a tough time. | 07:04 |
| Iwasaki trains | WILLACY: But the unyielding world of sumo is threatening to break him. He would have already quit | 07:20 |
| Izumi Hamasu | were it not for Izumi Hamasu, the stable master's wife and Iwasaki's surrogate mother. | 07:26 |
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| IZUMI HAMASU: We are responsible for looking after him. He is the same as one of my own kids. Not only Iwasaki, but all the sumo led by Baruto are members of the Onoe family and we work and live as a family. | 07:32 |
| Johnson | MURRAY JOHNSON: They're looked after until they start making money themselves. They're totally looked after by the boss of each stable, each haya. So yeah, if they've got the will and the desire, they'll get through it. | 08:03 |
| Iwasaki trains | Music | 08:16 |
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| WILLACY: The endless drills, the rigid discipline, and the communal lifestyle, are just a few reasons why many young Japanese shudder at the thought of becoming a sumo wrestler. | 08:34 |
| Baruto having hair done | So this sport is increasingly being dominated by hungrier and more high-powered foreigners. | 08:44 |
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| BARUTO: I feel I am a real sumo wrestler. Without my hair done in a topknot, I do not feel like a sumo. | 08:52 |
| Baruto trains | Music | 09:10 |
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| WILLACY: He was once known as Kaido Hoovelson. At a sliver under two metres tall, and tipping the scales at 175 kilograms, the former Estonian judo champion gave up his job as a nightclub bouncer, came to Tokyo, joined the Onoe stable and transformed himself into Baruto. | 09:15 |
| Baruto wrestles at match | Music | 09:37 |
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| The Estonian shot up the ranks, making the top division in just two years -- the second fastest rise in the history of sumo. It's brought Baruto fortune and fame, and helped him escape the destructive lure of Estonia's nightclub underworld. | 09:47 |
| Willacy at meal in restaurant with Baruto and Elena | Over a dinner of fried ox tongue, raw liver and buckets of beer, the 24-year-old reveals that sumo probably saved him from a life of crime. | 10:06 |
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| BARUTO: I didn't have any real or good friends then. I was hanging around with bad people who I thought were my friends. I didn't do anything bad, but we played together. I would be doing something bad if I was back in Estonia now. | 10:19 |
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| WILLACY: Baruto's transformation from bouncer to sumo glamour boy has been completed by his recent marriage to Elena Tregubova, a Russian he met in a Tokyo restaurant. | 10:49 |
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| ELENA TREGUBOVA: When I watch him on TV I become very nervous, and close my eyes. We don't talk about sumo or his sumo friends at home. | 11:00 |
| Wrestlers packing stable onto truck | WILLACY: While Baruto gets to live in his own apartment and is allowed to swan about town, the lower ranked wrestlers are squeezed in together at the stable and today as the big Estonian lounges around, Iwasaki and his fellow sumo must pack up the entire stable, everything from rice cookers to bicycles are being loaded onto the truck. | 11:22 |
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| The Onoe stable is hitting the road for one of the year's major championships, the Osaka Grand Tournament. | 11:50 |
| Osaka/ Baruto and others at function | Music | 12:00 |
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| WILLACY: But before any bouts, come the beers and a chance for the sumo to mingle with sponsors and fans in Osaka. | 12:14 |
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| SUMO WRESTLER: I will do my best. I will work hard. I am serious. | 12:24 |
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| WILLACY: While some wrestlers are letting their hair down, the stable's number one sumo is working the crowd like a pro. He mightn't be Japanese, but Baruto's won over everyone from diehard traditionalists to teenage fans. | 12:31 |
| Vox Pops . Fans | FEMALE FAN #1: Japanese boys don't have hungry spirits. Baruto was brought up in a poor country. | 12:50 |
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| FEMALE FAN #2: My favourite wrestler is Baruto. He's nice looking and is dignified. He's cool. | 13:05 |
| Izumi Hamasu at function | WILLACY: For the stable's matriarch, tonight is about keeping everyone happy while drumming up the colossal amount of cash needed to keep the operation afloat. | 13:17 |
| Izumi Hamasu | IZUMI HAMASU: The party is an important opportunity for the fans to see the wrestlers and come closer to them - to have photos taken with them and to shake their hands. | 13:27 |
| B&W Wrestling bout | Music | 13:53 |
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| WILLACY: Drumming up support for sumo is one challenge, scandalous behaviour is another. What would pass as minor infringements elsewhere, are regarded as major offences against the sanctity of this sport. | 14:03 |
| Archival. Sumo scandal | Three Russian wrestlers and a Japanese have been thrown out for using marijuana. | 14:16 |
| Photos. Takashi Saito | Music | 14:24 |
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| WILLACY: But the most serious blow to sumo was the death of a young trainee two years ago. | 14:29 |
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| Seventeen-year-old Takashi Saito died while undergoing punishment for running away from his stable. | 14:34 |
| B&W Wrestling bout | The novice sumo was smashed over the head with a beer bottle, pummelled with a baseball bat and put through half an hour of 'butsukari geiko' a battering by bigger wrestlers which is so fierce it usually only lasts for a few minutes. | 14:41 |
| Johnson calling wrestling match |
| 14:57 |
| Johnson. Super: | MURRAY JOHNSON: I think obviously in this case it was just two or three just working on him… and you know basically internal damage, heart failure - a combination of all sorts of things. They went way too far. | 15:06 |
| Johnson calling wrestling match |
| 15:18 |
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| WILLACY: Expatriate Australian, Murray Johnson, has been a senior sumo commentator on Japan's NHK network for thirteen years. He's seen young wrestlers undergo a vicious initiation known as 'hazing'. MURRAY JOHNSON: They're kicked, they're made to stand up, | 15:26 |
| Johnson | made to fight, made to do more practice sessions, which is banging into senior members of the stable. They'll keep hitting them hard, hitting them, hitting them. They'll go to the ground, they'll throw sand on them, whack them with a stick on the backside, up again, go again and that's seven days a week. So you wonder why they'd want to leave. | 15:42 |
| Archive. Junichi Yamamoto trial |
| 16:02 |
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| WILLACY: Last month stable master Junichi Yamamoto was sentenced to six years in jail for ordering the hazing of young Saito. | 16:07 |
| Keishi Onoe | Keishi Onoe, our Tokyo stable master, admits the death of a young aspirant has scandalised sumo and damaged the sport. | 16:16 |
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| KEISHI ONOE: Because I live in the same world and run a stable of young sumo, the death of this wrestler is not someone else's problem. But I have never thought I have pushed them too far. I feel I am still spoiling them. | 16:24 |
| Iwasaki cutting cabbage |
| 16:57 |
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| WILLACY: The Onoe stable's troubled young rookie is once again wondering if it's all worth it and whether or not he should escape. In Osaka, while his stable mates prepare for the 15 day grand tournament, his only opponent today is a bag of cabbages. Iwasaki has tried to run away for a second time. Hauled back, he's refusing to train. | 16:59 |
| Baruto at breakfast | For stable star Baruto, it's all laid on. There's a very different atmosphere at his pre-match breakfast. | 17:27 |
| Wrestling stadium | Music | 17:37 |
| Wrestlers parade in aprons | WILLACY: The moment of truth has finally arrived but before the big men fly, there's some ceremonial business to attend to. These silk aprons can cost as much as five or six thousand dollars each. After the combatants have paraded, the highest-ranking sumo performs a slow dance that's all about driving bad spirits from the ring. | 17:43 |
| Baruto match begins | Music | 18:15 |
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| WILLACY: Inside the dohyo on day one of the grand tournament, the brutal Baruto gets off to a flying start. But as the championship grinds on, the Estonian starts to struggle. After 14 days of fighting, Baruto is facing demotion, unless he can win his final bout. | 18:21 |
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| By sumo standards, it's a marathon. Whoever is forced out of the ring or is knocked off their feet will lose. By a matter of millimetres, Baruto emerges victorious, his rank intact. | 18:50 |
| Iwasaki enters ring | Shohei Iwasaki has decided to compete despite his lack of training. Since he's already in the lowest sumo rank, he doesn't have a lot to lose. Given his demoralised state of mind, it comes as no surprise the 16 year old performs poorly. He finishes the tournament with six losses and just one win. | 19:09 |
| Training at Onoe stable | Weeks later we return to the Onoe stable in south Tokyo. All the familiar faces are there except one. For a third time Shohei Iwasaki has absconded. It's a humiliating moment for the stable master - it's part of the sumo tradition that once a wrestler joins a stable he stays in it for life and loyalty is expected on both sides of the ring. | 19:36 |
| Keishi Onoe | KEISHI ONOE: Well… do I need to speak in front of this? Let's talk about it later. | 20:10 |
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| IZUMI HAMASU: We cannot contemplate that someone who joined our family will give up. I know the wrestlers are having a really rough time being apart from their families, because I have children of my own. | 20:22 |
| Baruto signs autographs | WILLACY: But one insider seems relieved to be rid of the teenage fugitive. | 20:42 |
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| BARUTO: Everyone worked hard to treat him kindly but he was up to his nose in his own troubles. Iwasaki forgot everything he was taught. He could not even do simple duties. That was why he was not strong in sumo. | 20:50 |
| Baruto calligraphy | WILLACY: Baruto knows that it takes and if he makes the second highest rank in sumo as Murray Johnson is predicting, he'll earn a base salary of three hundred thousand a year. MURRAY JOHNSON: He's a gentle giant. | 21:21 |
| Johnson | I mean off the dohyo you couldn't meet a nicer young man but when he gets up there, he's so powerful. He puts fear into opponents. | 21:36 |
| Iwasaki trains | Music | 21:43 |
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| WILLACY: The stable lost contact with Shohei Iwasaki and our efforts to find him came to nothing. | 21:48 |
| Shoma Yamamoto trains | One dream ends, another begins. Shoma Yamamoto is so green he hasn't even got enough hair to fashion into a topknot, but at 15 he already weighs in at an impressive 127 kg. For the stable master, Iwasaki was a failure of his own judgment. Yamamoto represents a new test of his wisdom and will. | 21:56 |
| Keishi Onoe | KEISHI ONOE: Heart and body? He's not yet ready. He is a good boy and his performance will become better. | 22:24 |
| Yamamoto sweeps floor | WILLACY: While Yamamoto knows his predecessor has disgraced the stable, he still misses having Iwasaki around. | 22:42 |
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| SHOMA YAMAMOTO: He was the one who was the easiest to speak to. I only have a few people to talk to…so I feel lonely. | 22:50 |
| Wrestlers dormitory | Music | 23:05 |
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| WILLACY: Crammed cheek by jowl into their dormitory, it's time for the wrestlers to wind down after another day at the stable. In a few hours, Yamamoto will rise for a new day of training and toil. This boy of 15 represents the future of sumo, but will this sport make him or break him? | 23:14 |
| Credits | Reporter: Mark Willacy Camera: Jun Matsuzono Keisuke Kimura Producer: Yayoi Eguchi | 23:45 |