I'm talking about the Japan Sumo Association's recent decision to limit the amount of foreigners allowed to participate in the sport. "Foreigner" here means foreign-born. So tough luck to those naturalized citizens.
Anyway, here is Debito's coverage of this disgrace and here is the original article.
I especially like his point:
How about having some international sports leagues limit their Japanese players to one — say, Japanese in Major League Baseball teams? Including those Japanese who have naturalized? Oh wait, do I hear calls of racism from the Japanese Peanut Galleries? Yes, the shoe on the other foot would pinch, wouldn’t it? And the sport as a whole would suffer since innate talent (as we have seen by the number of talented sumo rikishi from overseas) is hardly a nativist issue. But try telling that to the racist JSA.
Let's take it one step further and limit MLB teams to one foreigner per team, not just Japanese. Hey - it's an American sport, right? So let's keep it pure. Let the Japanese wannabe-players compete with all the other foreign-born players.
