The complicated nature of professional sumo wrestling

 

Sumo is the national sport of Japan. Despite what someone who has never really seen much of it and has very little knowledge about it might hastily think, it's a highly technical form of wrestling that requires enormous amounts of strength and highly polished technique. It doesn't matter how big, heavy and strong you are, if you don't have the technique you will be on the ground very quickly.

Professional sumo wrestlers in Japan, ie. rikishi, go through grueling training, usually 5 to 6 hours of hard training every single day, to build up strength, stamina and technique. All professional rikishi in Japan belong to an official sumo stable (a "sumo school" or "private sumo club" of sorts). Professional sumo is divided into six divisions, and all rikishi from division 6 to division 3 are mandated by their stable to live within the premises of the stable, where they get accommodation, food and a small allowance for daily expenses, and where they have to train every day, five to six hours a day minimum. It is, actually a very hard and grueling life. And it's pretty much their entire life, if they want to continue being professional sumo wrestlers.

The good

So why go through all this? What motivates people to enlist in these sumo stables?

For starters, sumo in Japan is extremely prestigious. Its history goes back literally centuries and it's extremely rich in culture, customs and traditions, both secular and practical, as well as religious (the entire sport being deeply rooted in Shintoism, and full of Shintoist beliefs, practices and traditions.)

All rikishi are considered celebrities of sorts in Japan. Obviously the higher-ranked you are, the more of a celebrity. There is great prestige in the job. Sumo tournaments are watched by thousands in the arena itself and millions through TV, and rikishi are admired and respected, and they often get all kinds of side gigs in all kinds of events.

Of course the job itself is a very stable form of livelihood: The professional rikishi are provided with accommodation and food at no expense of their own, plus a small allowance for daily expenses if in divisions 6-to-3. If a rikishi manages to climb to division 2 or better, it comes with a big amount of perks, including an actual sizeable salary and freedom to live wherever he wants (ie. he can either keep living at the stable, at no extra expense, or choose to move to live somewhere else, as long as he is available for daily training of course.) Needless to say, rikishi in division 2 and especially the highest division, division 1, are the most famous national celebrities and get the most admiration and most gigs.

This actually causes for bouts in divisions 3 and 2 to be extraordinarily fierce: Everybody in division 3 is trying to climb to division 2 and get all the perks that come with it, while everybody in division 2 is desperately trying to avoid dropping back to division 3. While quite obviously division 1 bouts are the most prestigious, it's the two next divisions that tend to have the most fierce, brutal and spectacular fights, with everybody desperately trying to avoid division 3.

There's also a strong sense of camaraderie within a stable: All the rikishi living in a stable have a strong common culture, and they usually are very close friends with each other, and have a lot of trust in each other, and everybody is there to support everybody else.

From the point of view of the wider public, rikishi are generally seen as "gentle giants" of sorts. While in the ring the fights can be absolutely brutal, outside the ring they are known for being very friendly, calm, polite, and role models to look up to, and they are often called to events, TV shows, schools, and other places, where they are usually treated like celebrities (especially if they are in the highest divisions.) In fact, rikishi are officially forbidden from participating in any fights or altercations outside the ring (such as for example a bar fight). Breaking this rule may result in sanctions and even expulsion.

The bad

Sumo wrestlers tend to be morbidly obese. It's not a requirement for them to gain weight, but you'll have a very hard time having any success if you don't, because the weight is an obvious advantage in wrestling. There have only been a handful of rikishi during the last 50 or so years that have weighed under 120 kg and have reached the salary divisions (ie. division 2 or 1.) It's not impossible, and there are examples (most notoriously Enhō Yūya, who is very short and weighed less than 100 kg when he reached division 1), but it requires extreme strength and skill to pull off, so much so that extremely few people have ever succeeded.

Even though rikishi tend to be very trained and very strong, morbid obesity tends to cause all kinds of problems regardless. No matter how well trained and how strong you are, no matter how strong your muscles and tendons are, the enormous weight puts a lot of strain on joints and ligaments. Not only do rikishi often have mobility problems (eg. good luck trying to run a 100m sprint, or even climbing a set of stairs), but injuries are extremely common.

Indeed, injuries are almost guaranteed in professional sumo. They almost come as an expected job hazard. Not only are the wrestlers severely overweight, putting extra strain on their joints and ligaments, and also making falls all the more dangerous (as bone fractures become more likely), but the wrestling itself tends to be extremely brutal, with very few restrictions on what can and cannot be done, which in itself increases the likelihood of injuries significantly.

If you watch any amount of professional Japanese sumo, you'll notice that at least half of the rikishi will be wearing some kind of bandages, supports and tapes, to either try to protect themselves from injury, or more commonly because of an injury that they are still recovering from.

In fact, by far the most common reason for a rikishi to fall to lower divisions is because of injuries. Professional tournaments do not give any concessions for injuries. If you don't participate, you lose by default, and thus can drop to a lower division if it happens enough times. There have been even cases of rikishi from division 1 dropping all the way to division 5 because of a severe enough injury that kept them from tournaments for a very long time. It's all an uphill battle from there (especially if the injury is of the sort that never really heals fully.)

Dropping from division 2 to division 3 is a major blow to the life of a wrestler. He will be once again obligated to move to live in the stable (if he was living in his own home), and he will not receive a salary anymore, instead just getting the small allowance. There's also numerous other perks of divisions 2 and 1 that are not given to the lower divisions, and thus lost if dropping to division 3 or lower. If a rikishi refuses to move to the stable, it may result in sanctions and even expulsion, ending his career, and potentially causing public shame. Many a rikishi in the two highest divisions has retired early because of injuries, before he drops to the lower divisions. After all, it's better to end in a high than either suffer the loss of perks or reputation by being expelled because of not complying with the rules.

The ugly

One thing I have not mentioned about the limitations of divisions 3-6 and the perks of divisions 1 and 2: That of marriage.

You see, rikishi in divisions 3-6 are not only obligated to live in the premises of the stable, but they are forbidden from getting married, or having any romantic relationships of the sort. One of the huge perks of getting to division 2 is that this restriction is dropped, and the rikishi is freely allowed to marry and move to his own home.

However, if he does that, dropping back to division 3 is even more of a huge blow: While such a rikishi is allowed to remain married (even the stables aren't that cruel), he will essentially stop being able to provide for his family because his salary will stop, and the small allowance of division 3 is not even close to enough. This can cause huge problems for that family, especially in Japan. And, indeed, early retirements due to injuries that put the wrestler in danger of dropping to division 3 are most common when said wrestler is married.

There's also an unhealthy attitude towards injuries. For the longest time, and to a large extent even to this day, if a rikishi gets injured on the ring, especially if it's during a tournament, he is supposed to just "toughen up" and walk out on his own, regardless of how bad the injury is. For the longest time there wasn't even any medical staff present in the vicinity to help him. This no doubt has worsened the severity of injuries many, many times. Only very recently (less than 10 years go) were the rules changed so that medical personnel are present at the events and a wrestler could be carried out in a wheelchair or stretcher if he was unable to walk, or even get direct medical help right there besides the ring if the injury is extreme.

But that's not even the ugliest part of professional sumo culture.

You see, even though there's a strong sense of camaraderie among the members of a sumo stable, there's still likewise a very strong pecking order: Those in higher divisions have more perks than those in lower divisions, and the former can often boss the latter around as they wish. There are all kinds of daily chores and tasks that need to be done in the premises of a stable, and the more disgusting chores (such as cleaning an outhouse) are rather obviously given to the members of the lowest divisions. In fact, part of the in-stable sumo culture is a form of hazing and bullying (the extents of which depends highly in the particular stable and its internal culture.) The members of the highest divisions may come up with disgusting tasks for the members of the lowest divisions just for the sake of it. This is generally considered part of the training itself, a form of "toughening up" the newcomers, and also a sort of perk for raising up in the ranks. Some of the hazing stories at the worst stables are just horrendous.

The most common misconception about Amelia Earhart

Ask pretty much anybody who Amelia Earhart was, and if that somebody knows the name, there's at least a 99% chance that they will respond that she was the first woman who tried a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean, who famously disappeared during that flight, never to be found. Some of them might say it was the Atlantic Ocean, but anyway, some kind of ocean.

And chances are that if you read the above, you didn't even bat an eye at the most egregious mistake stated there.

And what would that mistake be? The claim that it was a "solo" flight.

Indeed, for some reason there's an extremely common misconception that the vast, vast majority of people who have heard of the story of Amelia Earhart believe, that she was flying solo. That it was the first attempt by a woman at crossing the ocean as a solo flight.

But the fact is that it wasn't a solo flight. She had a copilot. A copilot that pretty much nobody remembers. Even from the absolutely microscopic minority of people who happen to know she wasn't flying solo, most of them couldn't tell his name. He is, perhaps, one of the most forgotten people in the history of humanity who was involved in a world-famous historical incident. His name was Fred Noonan.

Sometimes even "star programmers" might not be so "stellar"

I once worked for a small gaming company. One of the lead programmers there was what could be called a "star" coder. A hacker. Not only had he implemented several dozen games in the company, but he was a regular in all kinds of video game "hackatons" (ie. competitions where small groups of developers create a video game in a day or two), and was quite famous not only among those circles but among other indie gaming companies here as well. Needless to say everybody in the company considered him not only a stellar coder, but outright crucial to the survival of the company.

There's a saying that goes like "never meet your heroes", which means that when you admire a celebrity or someone you don't personally know, if you ever were to get to actually know that person it may well reveal personality or other flaws that greatly mar your admiration.

In this case the saying could be adapted as "never look at the star programmer's code".

There are admired stellar programmers who genuinely write extremely good well-written code, who know what they are doing, who have an extremely good understanding of algorithms and programming techniques, both from the theoretical and the practical point of view.

Then there are "stellar" programmers who... let's say, only give the appearance of being so. They might be very prolific and produce impressive-looking results, but if you delve into what they have written and what their actual knowledge is, it might be less than impressive.

You see, even though we worked for the same company, we were doing completely separate projects and never worked on the same project, so I never got to see his code. With the exception of one time, where I briefly participated in the development of one particular game.

Turned out that this "stellar" programmer with his impressive resume... wasn't one of the best programmers I have ever met. Sure, he could write code, and he knew the programming languages he was using, but I quickly noticed how poor his understanding of many programming related concepts and algorithms was.

As an example, in that project there was a need for a random number generator and because of the programming language only floating point numbers were available. He had implemented an extremely poor-quality Lehmer RNG. When I checked what the period of the generator was, it was in the thousands. I'm not kidding. His RNG went through a few thousands of values before it started repeating.

When I mentioned this to him, he had no idea what I was talking about. He had literally no understanding of even the basics of random number generation, and had never even thought about things like the period of an RNG. He had never tested what the period of his RNG was, or in any way checked its quality. He was lucky that it just happened to not give egregiously obvious poor quality to the player of the game.

I suggested I implement a slightly better  32-bit LCG. While the quality of LCGs is also not brilliant, at least the period could be pumped from the few thousands to over 4 billion (and the quality can be somewhat improved by mixing up the higher bits with the lower bits.) However, to implement this 32-bit LCG when 32-bit floating points are the only numerical data type available required a bit of ingenuity.

Ingenuity that, as it turns out, he absolutely did not have. Not only did he have no idea what an LCG was, he had no ideas whatsoever about how to implement 32-bit integer arithmetic using 32-bit floats. When I explained to him how to do 32-bit multiplication using 16-bit integers (as floats can be used to handle 16-bit integers just fine) using the classical long multiplication algorithm, he had no idea what I was talking about.

This guy, who had gone to school as normal, had no idea how long multiplication works. And apparently wasn't even very interested when I tried to explain it to him. I don't know which was more appalling, his lack of knowledge, or his lack of interest.

Yeah. Never meet your heroes, nor read their code.