Slender women grapple with heavyweight sumo traditions (02-05 13:19) Nineteen-year-old Sayaka Matsuo (pictured left during a training bout) lies on the tatami mat as a personal masseur works on her neck and shoulders to squeeze out the knots. But this is no pamper package with relaxing music or detoxifying mist. Matsuo is warming up for a head-clashing bout of Japan's national sport sumo. Strapping her mawashi'' (loin cloth) over her lycra bike shorts, she squats into position, her 60-kilogram frame squaring off against a man more than two-and-a-half times her weight. The huge size difference is no obstacle for Matsuo. I started sumo as a hobby. I feel a lot of pressure from my dad and my goal is to win the women's Sumo World Championship one day, she tells AFPs Jessica Glanz. As the daughter of a former professional sumo-wrestler, whose ring name was Sadanohana, Matsuo had a leg up into a sport not usually associated with women, and started to wrestle at just five years old. Now she is part of a small, but growing band of female grapplers who are turning the tables on one of Japan's oldest boys' clubs. Opening up the sport to women is part of an effort to legitimise sumo as a possible future Olympic event, Tokyo University's Sumo Club coach Toshiaki Hirahara said. But Hirahara is also quick to point out that the top-level wrestling millions of Japanese watch on television needs to preserve its religious and spiritual origins. I think the fact that women cannot enter the sacred national dohyo (ring) is understandable as it is the realm of the gods,'' he said. But the amateur league has nothing to do with gods, so let girls and boys do it equally.'' The proportion of female sumo wrestlers remains small there are almost 300 boys taking part in the sport for every girl in Japan's elementary schools, according to the Japan Sumo Federation. Despite the yawning gap in numbers, female strength reigns supreme. Because the girls grow at a younger age, they are stronger than the boys,'' coach Hideto Tsushima of Nihon University says. Fujita, who studies Taiwanese history by day, is testimony to the fact that, with a little training, female wrestlers can remain on top by night she throws men twice her size at Tokyo University Sumo Club. So far, it's a passion practised in private, and she is yet to tell her parents. I think they'll be surprised... I plan to tell them after I graduate, or maybe when I get married,'' she said.

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Slender women grapple with heavyweight sumo traditions