Sumo is more than a sport in Japan. It’s a sacred tradition, a 1,500-year-old spectacle steeped in Shinto ritual and ceremony. But at its heart lies a long-standing taboo: women are still barred from the traditional ring, known as the dohyō in Japanese.

Don’t miss the full story, whose reporting from Reeno Hashimoto and Koji Ueda at The Associated Press is the basis of this AI-assisted article. While professional sumo wrestling in Japan maintains its 1,500-year-old tradition of excluding women from the ...

The recent Japan Venus Sumo festival in Tachikawa highlighted the sport's domestic popularity while focusing attention on the global rise of the

While women remain excluded from professional sumo, more than 600 now compete at the amateur level. The Associated Press documented some of them in training, including wrestlers preparing for the Sumo World Championships this weekend in Bangkok, Thailand.