Photo/Illutration This photo of retired rikishi registered with the Sumo Pro agency is shown on the top page of the agency’s website. (Provided by Sumo Pro)

Need someone measuring 180 centimeters tall and weighing 100 kilograms to make a big splash at a special event?

Count on Sumo Pro, short for O-Sumo-san Promotions, which offers a one-stop service for renting out retired rikishi professional sumo wrestlers.

The agency, operated by Sirius Ltd., helps cast retired rikishi in films, TV dramas and commercials. A former wrestler was assigned to appear in “Thermae Romae II,” a 2014 movie themed around a bathhouse architect from ancient Rome.

An image of huge, near-naked men standing in a row in their mawashi belts dominates the top page of the agency’s website, but parts for such large beefy individuals are hard to come by in the show business.

For Keisuke Kamikawa, who heads Sumo Pro, a bigger goal is to help sumo wrestlers plan out their second careers after leaving the dohyo.

“Many boys enter the professional sumo world as soon as they finish junior high school,” said Kamikawa, 44, a retired rikishi himself.

“Things are naturally difficult because they train without thinking about the future and retire during the second half of their 20s or their 30s. They don’t even know what they want to do or what they can do.”

The four or five retired rikishi who are regulars with Sumo Pro usually work at nursing care facilities operated by Sirius or organize sumo shows at a Tokyo restaurant or elsewhere.

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Keisuke Kamikawa talks to an elderly person visiting a nursing care facility operated by Sirius Ltd. in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward in November. (Kensuke Suzuki)

Kamikawa wrestled as Wakatenro in the second-ranked juryo division. He was among the sumo wrestlers suspected of involvement in a match-fixing scandal that surfaced in February 2011.

The Japanese Sumo Association punished him with a recommendation for retirement. He chose to bow out of the sport although he denied the allegations.

Kamikawa was 15 when he left his native Hokkaido and became a professional sumo wrestler. At age 33, he was already thinking about retiring, partly because he was suffering from a recurring knee injury, but the scandal that forced his retirement came all too suddenly.

Kamikawa founded Sirius in 2012. He also set up an association for the promotion of second careers for rikishi with former professional sumo wrestlers.

If he can secure more corporate backers, there will be more potential jobs for retired rikishi.

Kamikawa has another mission that is no less important: give lessons to retired rikishi on the difference between the sumo world and society at large.

“Some land jobs but quit for the mere reason that the jobs are not like what they thought they would be,” he said. “In a sense, retired rikishi are more difficult to handle than typical high school graduates. They are not newcomers to the real world because they have been in sumo circles.”

Wrestlers have opportunities to go to high-end restaurants soon after they enter the sumo world if they become attendants to a “sekitori,” or a wrestler in the top two divisions of makuuchi and juryo. They may also see stacks of banknotes in money gifts sponsors hand out to winning wrestlers. 

“Sekitori are also prone to have it wrong,” Kamikawa said. “They are allowed to have attendants of their own not because they are great or anything but just because that’s a convention of the sumo world.

“They must understand in the first place that they simply happened to be in a society that works like that.”

More than 80 rikishi took retirement last year.

Some, including retired yokozuna Hakuho, have stayed in the sumo world as stablemasters. Another said he will seek to be a coach in amateur sumo by drawing on his wrestling experience in his school days.

Still others may be able to find employment through the offices of their stablemasters or supporters’ groups.

Kamikawa said he is concerned about “all except those lucky few.”

“I hope there will be at least one more option for sumo wrestlers or another opportunity for them to think about what they can do,” he said. “Operating a ‘chanko’ hot-pot dish restaurant is not the only thing we can do. I hope to overturn the fixed image that rikishi only end up running chanko restaurants.”

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