Tradition thus serves as a tie that transcends time and binds generations together, making sure that the values and knowledge of the past survive and get adopted by new generations. The problem is, as in the case of sumo, the assumption of unilinear inheritance -- such an account implies that both the content of the culture transmitted and its origin, the culture of the past, are simple, static and monolithic (Vlastos 1998:3). .
Unilinear inheritance in the case of sumo is simply not the case. Recent studies have exposed large discontinuities between the sumo of today and the sumo of "old" Japan. Harold Bolitho's study of sumo in Tokugawa period, for instance, is quick to draw a distinction between sechie-zumo, the ceremonial form of sumo performed in the imperial court prior to the rise of the Shogunate, and the sumo that arose during the mid- to late Tokugawa period, which, formed the basis of sumo as "we know it today." In Bolitho's words, .
What would be unreasonable would be to see any real link between the wrestling of the imperial court and the sumo wrestling we know today It was in no way a public spectacle but rather yet another of those rituals by which the emperors carried out their primary function which was the guaranteeing of good harvests (Bolitho 1988:19).
During the Tokugawa period, due to the proliferation of towns and merchant culture, sumo became a spectator sport (19-21). Under the circumstances of heavy governmental measures prohibiting sumo, the need for legitimization forced sumo to adopt strict rules and to become practiced under "kanjin, or fund-raising designation" (24). The ritual side of sumo, Bolitho implies, all the Shinto symbols and practices that nowadays are evoked to represent sumo's "tradition," in fact dates only back to the late Tokugawa Period.
Another author, Lee Thompson, has done work on sumo that dates one of its most "traditional" elements, the rank of yokozuna (or Grand Champion), only to the beginning of the 20th century.
