Ever since he entered the ring, the sumo wrestler known as Asashoryu has been a symbol of friendship between Japan and his home country of Mongolia. Now relations between the two nations are in jeopardy after a humiliating scandal that has driven the grand champion to a nervous breakdown.

Mongolian demonstrators have taken to the streets of the capital, Ulan Bator, after the 6ft, 326lb Asashoryu was suspended for the rest of the year after apparently faking a doctor’s note to avoid taking part in a tournament. To make matters worse, the punishment imposed by the sumo authorities – a period of virtual house arrest in Tokyo – has had a disastrous effect on his mental health. According to doctors, the man whose titanic torso was unmovable in the ring has suffered an emotional collapse that has left him tearful, withdrawn and pleading to be allowed to return to his family in Mongolia.

Japanese newspapers are already speculating that this may be the professional death for one of the sport’s greatest champions. Supporters of Asashoryu, meanwhile, suspect a deliberate campaign to do down the Mongolian athletes who have come to dominate sumo, at the expense of smaller and less-powerful Japanese wrestlers.

“It is an abuse of human rights and it makes us feel very uncomfortable,” one young man told Mongolian television in Ulan Bator, where dozens of banner-wielding protesters of the Mongolia Democratic Alliance marched in front of the Japanese Embassy. “Mongolians have always been skilled at sumo. This punishment [of Asashoryu] gives young Mongolians the impression that they want to suppress our skills.” The protesters carried posters bearing slogans such as “Don’t violate his human rights” and “Save our hero, a symbol of goodwill”.

Ya Sanjmyatav, a member of parliament and vice-president of the Mongolian Sumo Association, met the marchers and tried to calm them, cautioning of the dangers of escalation in the affair. “Other people may use your good intentions and emotional upset to smash the relationship between the two countries,” he said.

The imbroglio began this month during the annual summer exhibition tournament that the Japan Sumo Association conducts to drum up an increasingly scare supply of new recruits. As the sport’s greatest wrestler, Asashoryu, 26, would have been its star act – but he bowed out, pleading injury to his ligaments and back.

Imagine, then, the outrage when Japanese television showed footage of the absent wrestler at a charity football match in Mongolia, dressed in a Wayne Rooney shirt, and heading the ball with acrobatic abandon.

Asashoryu was summoned to Tokyo immediately and awarded the harshest penalty ever imposed on a yokozuna, or grand champion. He would miss the next two of six annual basho, or grand tournaments, and forfeit 30 per cent of his 2.82 million yen (£12,400) monthly salary – as well as the Y10 million prize money for the winner of each basho.

Steely inner strength and “fighting spirit” are considered as essential to a sumo champion as a vast belly and tree-trunk thighs, so Asashoryu’s reaction has provoked as much dismay as sympathy. Rather than accepting his punishment quietly, he appears to have been mentally crushed by it. Three doctors have given different diagnoses, ranging from acute stress to dissociative disorder to full-scale nervous breakdown. Two have recommended that he return to Mongolia, one that he remain in Japan. The sumo world is riven by debate about what to do with him. The headlines in yesterday’s sports papers floated a third possibility – that he may retire from sumo altogether.

Asashoryu, whose real name is Dolgorsuren Dagvadorj, won his first basho in 2002 and has won 21 of 29 tournaments since then. His fans include Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan, who called on the wrestler’s parents during a recent visit to Mongolia. But the predictability of an Asashoryu victory is driving away fans and he shows little of the stern calm and dignity displayed traditionally by Japanese wrestlers.

Two years ago he was in disgrace after pulling the hair of another wrestler; this year a magazine accused him of throwing matches, an accusation denied indignantly. Seldom spoken aloud, but lurking in the background is a further concern – that Asashoryu is not Japanese, fuelling the conspiracy theories in his native Mongolia. Sumo is a sport deeply tied up with Japan’s native Shinto religion and with notions of national identity but, for the first time in its 1,500-year history, there is no Japanese grand champion, another factor in the sport’s declining popularity.

Asashoryu’s absence will provide a bit of breathing space for a home-grown champion to rise up from the ranks and for sumo purists, if not his Mongolian countrymen, that may seem like no bad thing.

The rivals

— Though the causes of the 1969 “Football War” between El Salvador and Honduras went deeper than the beautiful game, a World Cup qualifier was the catalyst for four days of full-scale conflict between the two nations which left as many as 2,000 dead

— A disputed run-out in a cricket match between India and Pakistan in 1999 caused such a disturbance that the stadium was emptied before the game could proceed

— When Laure Manadou, France's sports personality of the year 2006, went to join her boyfriend in Italy, she unleashed a wave of mutual disdain. French media accused Italy of “kidnapping” its Olympic swimmer and Italy's top coach was loath to train her in case she threatened Italian prodigy Federica Pellegrini

Sources: British Council; Times archives

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