What country are Sumo Wrestlers from?

[Cornhulio]

I read that a lot of the Japanese Sumo wrestlers are actually from Taiwan, why would this be, cant Japan find enough of there own wrestlers? I don't think I would go if I knew the wrestlers were not Japanese, I'm in Japan to see Japanese not Taiwanese

[yoshi]

I don`t think we have many Taiwanese sumo wrestler, mainly Mongolian people.
At the moment around 38% is international sumo wrestler, which mean still 62% are Japanese sumo wrestlers.
I don`t think it`s bad thing there are many gaikokujin (foreigners) in sumo.
Also, there mind and spirits are really Japanese than average Japanese.

[Hillbilly]

here's one Taiwanese sumo wrestler, but the article is from 1985 ... left Taiwan at 90 kg and 5 years later returned to Taiwan at 175kg lol

http://taiwaninfo.nat.gov.tw/fp.asp?...282&CtNode=103

[minervasirius]

Years ago, only Japanese were allowed in sumo. Recently they have allowed wrestlers of other nationalities to join. Most of the ones I see are from Mongolia and U.S. mainly Hawaii. When I get bored watching the main channels on cable tv, I channel surf to look for other channels to watch. I happen to stop by and watch sumo wrestling matches. Other people may say it is boring and one-directional in that it is just pushing and the little wrestlers will just get bullied around by the bigger sumo.
In fact, I was one of those who had that mentality. When I was able to watch a couple of matches, I saw that it isn't just pushing and shoving. There are techniques being employed to gain the upper-hand despite you being lighter than your opponent. From what I've seen the lighter sumo will pretend to go head on against the heavier fighter, but then immediately sidesteps so that the heavier sumo's momentum makes him go out of the ring. There are other techniques being used and I'd say the matches usually are short but pretty exciting to watch.