Japan's first female leader faces a taboo over entering the male-only sumo ring

TOKYO (AP) — Sanae Takaichi made history by becoming Japan's first female prime minister in October. She must now decide whether she'll break another barrier: the taboo barring women from the sumo ring.

The winner of the Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament that ends Sunday will be presented with the Prime Minister’s Cup. Some of her male predecessors, including former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, have entered the ring to hand over the cup.

Takaichi, a staunch conservative who supports Japan’s traditional gender and paternalistic values, may not break the taboo. In any case, she won't face a decision on whether to enter the sumo ring this time because she returns a day later from the Group of 20 summit in South Africa.

Her next chance to make a decision will come at the New Year's tournament in Tokyo.

But a debate on the taboo against women likely will continue, in no small part, because a woman now leads Japan. There also is criticism that the ban in sumo and other religious places is out of touch with the changing place of women in Japanese society.

The sumo ring is only part of the controversy.

In Japan, female worshippers have for centuries been banned from certain holy mountains, religious training sessions, temples, shrines and festivals.

Other places in the world have similar taboos, but the one in Japan stems from the belief in female “impurity” associated with menstruation and childbirth, as well as certain misogynic Buddhist views, says Naoko Kobayashi, an Aichi Gakuin University professor and expert on religion and gender.

The female ban at holy mountains, including Mount Fuji, and religious establishments has been largely eliminated over the years. But it lingers at certain shrines and festivals.

Many of these bans are from the 19th century Meiji era or later, Kobayashi said, and the taboo has been hard to break because women were also kept from political and religious decision-making over the years.

Sumo's origins are linked to rituals for Japan’s indigenous religion of Shinto, which is largely rooted in animism and the belief that thousands of kami, or spirits, inhabit nature. The first sumo matches date back 1,500 years as a ritual dedicated to the kami, with prayers for bountiful harvests, dancing and other performances at shrines.

The dohyo where sumo takes place is an elevated ring made of special clay, with its edge marked by a circle of rice-straw separating the inner sanctuary and the outside world of impurity. It's off-limits to women in professional sumo.

Some experts say sumo follows the Shinto belief in female impurity.

The Japan Sumo Association has denied the female ban is based on the Shinto belief of impurity.

“This interpretation is a misunderstanding,” said the association chief, Nobuyoshi Hakkaku, in 2018. He said sumo rituals are tied to folk beliefs like being thankful for a good harvest and are not about rigid religious principles.

“We have consistently denied sexist intentions,” Hakkaku said. “The rule that makes the dohyo a serious battleground for men is only natural for wrestlers, making the dohyo a male-only world and (leading to) passing down the practice of not having women go up there.”

Citing a seventh century document called “Ancient Chronicles of Japan," historians say female court members were the first to perform sumo at the request of an emperor. There are documentary records of female sumo wrestlers in 16th century documents.

Sumo gained prestige when matches were attended in 1884 by the Emperor Meiji and later earned the status of a national sport with the completion of the original Ryogoku Arena in 1909.

In 1978, a female labor ministry bureaucrat, Mayumi Moriyama, protested after the sumo association prevented a girl who had won a local children's sumo qualifying match from advancing to the finals at a real sumo ring.

In 1990, Moriyama, as government spokesperson, expressed her desire to enter the ring for the presentation of the Prime Minister’s Cup but was rejected by the sumo association.

In 2018, the mayor of Maizuru in northern Kyoto collapsed during a speech in a sumo ring. Two female medical experts rushed in and started performing first aid as several male sumo officials watched. Two more women tried to join the first-aid effort before announcements demanded the women leave the ring. Sumo officials threw salt afterwards, a gesture of purification.

Days later, the association refused to allow Tomoko Nakagawa, then-mayor of Takarazuka city, to enter the dohyo to give a speech for an exhibition tournament. Nakagawa, forced to speak from the side of the ring, said she was mortified to be rejected just because she is female.

The sumo association chief apologized over the “failure to take appropriate action in a life-threatening situation” and for making Nakagawa uncomfortable, and formed a panel of outside experts to examine the female ban. Seven years later, a decision is still pending.

“Excluding women under the premise of male-centered traditions and customs can be no longer justified under the values of the times,” Kobayashi, the professor, said.

Takaichi is not considered a feminist. She has supported paternalistic family values and keeping the succession of Japan’s monarchy open only to men. She also opposes changing a 19th-century law that would allow married couples the option of keeping separate surnames.

Takaichi is trying to win back support from right-wing voters who have been drawn to emerging populist groups in recent elections. An attempt to present the trophy in the ring would be seen as defying sumo's traditions and could harm her image with those voters.

She has not commented on how she'll handle the trophy presentation, but her top government spokesperson has indicated Takaichi is not considering stepping into the ring.

“Prime Minister Takaichi intends to respect the tradition of sumo culture,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara told reporters.

FILE - Japan's new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi speaks during a press conference at the prime minister's office in Tokyo, on Oct. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)

FILE - Grand Champion Asashoryu, left, is presented his champion trophy from Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi following his victory at the Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament in Fukuoka, southern Japan, on Nov. 27, 2005. (Kyodo News via AP, File)

Sumo wrestler Yoshinofuji, center, reacts after being beaten by Yokozuna Hoshoryu during their bout at the Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament in Fukuoka, southern Japan on Nov. 17, 2025. (Kotaro Ueda/Kyodo News via AP)

FILE - Grand champion Asashoryu of Mongolia, left, receives the Prime Minister's Cup from Chief Cabinet Secretary and soon-to-be Premier Shinzo Abe at Tokyo's Ryogoku Sumo Arena on Sept. 24, 2006. (Kyodo News via AP, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican senator who had effectively blocked confirmation of President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve said Sunday he was dropping his opposition after the Department of Justice ended its investigation of the current central bank chair.

The announcement by Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina removes a big hurdle to Trump's effort to install Kevin Warsh, a former high-ranking Fed official, in the job in place of Jerome Powell, long under White House pressure to lower interest rates. Tillis' opposition was enough to stall the nomination in the GOP-controlled Senate Banking Committee as Powell neared the scheduled end of his term on May 15.

“I am prepared to move on with the confirmation of Mr. Warsh. I think he’s going to be a great Fed chair,” Tillis told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” two days after the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia said her office’s investigation of the Fed’s multibillion-dollar building renovations was over. Powell's brief congressional testimony last summer about that work was also under review.

The Fed's internal watchdog is scrutinizing a project, now at $2.5 billion after earlier estimates had put it at $1.9 billion, that the Republican president has criticized for cost overruns. Powell had asked in July for the inspector general's review.

“I believe that there will not be any wrongdoing. Maybe we find a little stupid here in terms of somebody responsible for the project making a decision they shouldn't? Maybe. But it doesn’t rise to a criminal prosecution. That was my problem to begin with because I feel like there were prosecutors in D.C. that thought this was going to be a lever to have Mr. Powell leave early," he said.

Tillis, who infuriated Trump in June for opposing his big tax and spending cuts bill over Medicaid reductions and then announced he would not seek reelection in 2026, added that he had received assurances from the Justice Department that “the case is completely and fully settled … and that the only way an investigation would be opened would be a criminal referral from one of the most respect inspector generals.”

The committee on Saturday said it planned to vote Wednesday on Warsh's nomination. The ranking Democrat, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, responded with a statement that "no Republican claiming to care about Fed independence should support moving forward the nomination of Kevin Warsh, who proved in his nomination hearing to be nothing more than President Trump’s sock puppet.”

Also Wednesday, Fed policymakers will meet and are expected to keep their key interest rate unchanged for the third straight meeting, shrugging off Trump's demands for a cut. At a news conference, Powell could indicate whether he will remain on the Fed's board of governors after his term as chair ends, an unusual but not completely unprecedented step that would deny Trump the opportunity to fill another seat on the seven-member board. Powell's term as a governor lasts until January 2028.

At a hearing last week, Warsh told senators he never promised the White House that he would cut interest rates and pledged to be “an independent actor” if confirmed as chair. Hours before that, Trump had been asked in a CNBC interview whether he would be disappointed if Warsh did not immediately cut rates. “I would,” the president said.

Without the constraints of a political campaign, Tillis has spoken out forcefully about Powell, decrying the inquiry by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, a longtime Trump ally, as a “vindictive prosecution” and suggested it threatened the Fed’s longtime independence from day-to-day politics. Tillis told NBC that he had gotten assurances from the Justice Department that he needed "to feel like they were not using DOJ as a weapon to threaten the independence of the Fed. So this will allow Mr. Warsh to move on with his confirmation.”

On Saturday, Trump was asked by reporters whether there was now smooth sailing for Warsh with the end of the Justice Department's investigation. “I imagine it's smooth,” Trump said, adding that his nominee “is going to be fantastic.” The president said he still wanted to find out “how can a building of that size cost ... whatever it’s going to be.”

Trump visited the Fed building in July and, in front of television cameras, said the renovations would run $3.1 billion. Powell, standing next to him, said after looking at a paper presented to him by Trump, that the president's latest price tag was incorrect.

The investigation was among several undertaken by the Justice Department into Trump’s perceived adversaries. For months it had failed to gain traction as prosecutors struggled to articulate a basis to suspect criminal conduct. Other efforts by the department to prosecute Trump’s adversaries, including New York state Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, and former FBI Director James Comey, have also been unsuccessful.

Last month, a federal judge quashed Justice Department subpoenas issued to the Fed in the investigation, describing their purpose as “to harass and pressure Powell to resign” and open the path for a new chair. A prosecutor handling the Powell case had acknowledged at a closed-door court hearing that the government had not found any evidence of a crime.

Pirro said Friday on X that she “will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so.” The acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, told NBC on Sunday that ”there is no doubt that we will investigate" if the inspector general finds evidence of criminal conduct.

Warsh is a financier and former member of the Fed’s board of governors. Trump nominated him in January.

FILE - President Donald Trump listens to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speak during a visit to the Federal Reserve, July 24, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., speaks during the confirmation hearing of Kevin Warsh, nominee for Federal Reserve chair, on Capitol Hill, in Washington Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Kevin Warsh testifies during his nomination hearing to be a member and chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill, in Washington Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

FILE - Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell addresses students at Harvard University, March 30, 2026, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., speaks during the confirmation hearing of Kevin Warsh, nominee for Federal Reserve chair, on Capitol Hill, in Washington Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)