Non-Japanese athletes have competed in sumo, but no nation has swept the sport like Mongolia. Since the early ’90s, Mongolian wrestlers have succeeded at the highest levels, even becoming yokuzuna—grand champions—at disproportionate rates. Meanwhile, Japan has seen the rise of its own version of MAGA: the far-right Sanseito party, buoyed by fervent nativism (and young, extremely online voters), has gained increasing power in Japanese parliament. Tokyo resident and sumo fan Joshua Hunt sets out to trace these converging paths.
At the grand sumo tournament, very few people were willing to pass judgment on Sanseito. Instead of calling the party’s electoral victory “regrettable,” as they had Onosato’s performance, most simply said they were surprised. A number of people used the word fukuzatsu to describe their feelings about the party, which can either mean that something is too complicated to put into words or that they are of two minds about it. Many seemed to find it equally difficult to explain the nuances of sumo’s ethnic politics, but in Nagoya I started to get the sense that I was looking at the issue backward—that the longing for the great Japanese hope had less to do with a sense of national superiority than an anxiety over whether the country’s best days were behind it.
“It’s very important for Japanese people when there is a Japanese-born yokozuna,” Naomi, the tour guide, told me. “Recently Mongolian wrestlers have been so strong, and I think it has become the basis for a kind of inferiority complex.” She paused for a while and then paraphrased the same words that had inspired the name of the Kokugikan in Tokyo: “After all, sumo is the national sport of Japan.”
