Three items written by Doreen Simmons on foreign interest in sumo for the attention of Mr Kuramori of Sumo-Kai Magazine. Three pdfs as follows:
1)‘ Personal Experience – Foreign Sumo Fan’: 6 page pdf, describing at length the origins of DS’s interest in sumo, the ways in which she has indulged it, and her experience of watching sumo and waiting overnight to buy tickets;
2) Letter from DS to Mr Kuramori of Sumo-Kai Magazine beginning ‘Why do Japanese give foreigners strange guidance to sumo?’, discussing, for example, a perceived tendency of some Japanese to assume that foreign visitors are not really interested in a sport uniquely Japanese and to make fun of it, acting in this way to try to seem more international in outlook. 4 page pdf;
3) ’Foreign Journalists and Sumo’, annotated by hand ‘Copy of Fax sent Friday 27 Nov’. In English and Japanese. DS debates, through anecdotes of events she has attended, the subject of who is best placed to guide foreign journalists on the subject of sumo – a Japanese interpreter who might omit important underlying cultural matters or someone who is not Japanese but understands the sport well. 4 page pdf.