Thousands of kids in Japan attend amateur sumo clubs every weekend. Many adults join them as part of fitness regimes.

Hundreds more, young and old, in nations around the world have also given what many term the Japanese national sport a try over the past 20-years or so thanks to efforts by well-meaning individuals intent on promoting sumo far and wide.

Yet those efforts are continually being undermined by the sport's very own governing body — the Tokyo-based International Sumo Federation.