In last week's column, I talked about overseas tours by the Japan Sumo Association and also mentioned the live sumo broadcasts with English commentary on NHK.
What I didn't reveal was that the latter came about as a direct result of the former.
According to Hiro Morita, a presenter and commentator at NHK, English-language coverage of sumo on Japan's national broadcaster started in 1992 "because the year before that (the JSA) went to London and that was a huge hit. Everybody loved that. So people around the world asked NHK to start sumo broadcasts in English"