Japan's sumo wrestlers are routinely beaten with baseball bats, bamboo swords and other blunt objects to instil them with bravery and “fighting spirit”, according to a committee investigating the violent death of a teenage wrestler this year.

The panel, appointed by the Japan Sumo Association, the sport's governing body, discovered that 92 per cent of sumo “stables” where wrestlers live and train, employ baseball bats or similar “implements” in training.

A third owned up to problems of bullying or other physical abuse and 13 per cent said that training and physical punishment were inseparable.

The abusive nature of the sumo regime comes as no surprise to insiders. For centuries, senior wrestlers have terrorised young trainees with “cuddles”, a euphemism for violent abuse. But the new findings will shock many fans and further undermine confidence in a sport facing allegations of match fixing, a scandal involving its grand champion and dwindling audience figures.

The investigation was set in train after the death last June of Takashi Saito, a 17-year-old junior wrestler who fought under the name Tokitaizan. He was first said to have died of heart failure in training. It was only when his family insisted on seeing his body that they began to realise the truth. His face was swollen, his body was covered in deep cuts and bruises and he had cigarette burns on his legs.

His stable master, a former wrestler named Junichi Yamamoto admitted hitting him with a beer bottle hours before his death. Media reports suggest that he was later punched, kicked and beaten with a metal baseball bat by other members of the Tokitsukaze stable in the presence of Mr Yamamoto.

The police began to take an interest in the death only after it was reported by the media. Mr Yamamoto has been expelled from the JSA, but no charges in the case have so far been brought. The investigative panel of prominent sumo fans was appointed by the association itself, but its findings hardly do honour to the sport.

“We know that implements have been used for training at the stables from way back,” says Yorimasa Takeda, a sports journalist who has accused the JSA of allowing sumo matches to be fixed. “I think that very tough training, which may sometimes look unreasonable to ordinary people, might sometimes be necessary because sumo is such a harsh, physical sport.”

The Tokitaizan tragedy is symptomatic of wider decline in the sport, which has been losing its audience to baseball and football. This is partly because of the increasing dominance of the sport by foreign wrestlers. Both the current grand champions are Mongolian — the greatest of them all, Asashoryu, recently returned to Japan after a scandal in which he appeared to have faked injury to avoid an exhibition tournament.

But the harsh life of the trainee wrestler is increasingly unattractive to young Japanese men. It appears that the late Tokitaizan was victimised because he had announced that he wanted to give up sumo; ironically, his death will make it even harder to recruit and keep young talent.

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