Japan's fight clubs: local promoters preside over one of the few booms in Japanese business. But with one of them now dead, and another in prison, they are suddenly fighting to survive

Japan, Inc., March, 2003 by Roland Kelts

AN AIR OF URGENCY pulses through the Utsunomiya line en route to Saitama. Mobs of teenagers and 20-somethings clamor on at each stop, the girls swathed in fashionable neo-peasant paisleys and suede jackets, the boys dressed in darker tones with hip-hop swagger and flair. Some of them gaze into glossy martial arts magazines as the train hums forward, others gather in dense mobs at each end of the aisle. It's an early Sunday afternoon in June, shoppers' rush-hour in Japan. Packed Shibuya- or Ginza-bound weekend trains are a Tokyo cliche. But this train is surging towards the 37,000 seat Saitama Super Arena, and it's way too early in the day for rock 'n' roll.

"I used to go to rock concerts all the time," confides Hidemi Ogata, an elegant, wiry-limbed woman with a no-nonsense haircut. Ogata is a freelance photographer who has published a book profiling a kickboxer. "But now I go to the same places to see fights. I've been to more than 10 events in the past two years. The music is good, the video shows are really artistic. And the crowd ... it's just so exciting."

The Sunday crowd at Saitama is decidedly youthful, chic and eager to spend, flashing tickets at the gate priced from [yen] 7,000 up to [yen] 100,000 for ringside seats, and stocking up on T-shirts, posters and other paraphernalia starting at [yen] 5,000. The show is called "PRIDE 21," and for the next four hours, the capacity hall is blasted virtually senseless by an array of video pyrotechnics, throbbing rhythms, guitar shrieks and laser-lights--not to mention the action in the ring: 16 fighters from the Americas, Europe and Asia competing in eight anything-goes matches, celebrity guest cameos, sparsely-clad ring girls and spontaneous spatterings of viscous bodily fluids to remind everyone what this is all about--fighting that's real.

"Pro-wrestling was okay when I was a kid," adds Ogata, who pays an average [yen] 30,000 for each tournament she attends. "But this is special because it's not fake. The fighters train for months to prepare for maybe three minutes in the ring. I can see into their personalities during the fight. They're practically naked up there."

Japan's fight business is big, had and booming--and among the very few native entertainment industries bold enough to branch overseas in the early years of the 21st century. K-1, a kickboxing and karate-based sports show founded 10 years ago, is the reigning Godzilla of the industry's Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) corporations, earning a reported [yen] 2.6 billion plus in sales and [yen] 500 million in profits. PRIDE, a grappling-oriented MMA outfit started in 1997, posts similarly eye-popping revenues; its [yen] 100,000 premium seats and merchandising income from the big venues averages out to about [yen] 40 to [yen] 50 million per event. "Five years ago, these sports were not nearly as popular," says Mattias G. Lorentzi, a Tokyo-based martial arts trainer from Sweden who has worked with a number of K- I athletes, including the current celebrity fighter, oversized American Bob Sapp. "The growth has been phenomenal--and not just in Japan, but internationally."

Suddenly, however, the phenomenal success of both promotions could be jeopardized. In early January, PRIDE's 42 year-old president, Naoto Morishita, committed suicide in a Shinjuku hotel room. One month later, K-1 founder and former president, Kazuyoshi Ishii, was jailed with two of his colleagues on charges of corporate tax evasion. Ishii resigned as K-1 president in December, when the charges first surfaced; he and his cronies have now been arrested for hiding upwards of [yen] 600 million in corporate income.

The hard won, clean-cut image of the fight industry--so critical to its mass appeal--has been badly tarnished. This matters a lot in Japan, where fighting has become both hip and classy, and not just for men. Young Japanese women, often cited as the single driving force behind Japan's consumer economy, have taken to fighting-as-entertainment in droves. Gainfully employed and residing in the family home, many have disposable income to burn. And unlike their male counterparts, who spend hours in the office and after-hours at the company drinking party, they have the time and energy in which to burn it.

"Fifty percent of our fan base is female," says Yuka Sugiyama, vice president of GAEA, Japan's top-ranked (and most lucrative) women's pro-wrestling company, which takes its name from the Greek "Mother Earth" goddess.

Sugiyama founded GAEA with wrestler Chigusa Nagayo eight years ago. The company now posts annual profits of [yen] 500 million and has recently gained widespread international exposure through GALA Girls, an award-winning documentary produced by the BBC in 2000. It was shown at film festivals throughout the US and Europe, and there are plans for a German documentary, as well as a series of press junkets and even to be staged in European venues.

"There's an interest in Japanese women's wrestling because of the traditional roles Japanese women have had in the past," says Sugiyama. "You know, passive and quiet, kimono-wearing women." At GAEA's final event of 2002, held at Tokyo's vaunted Korakuen Hall, a sold-out arena of otherwise reserved housewives, OLs and teenage girls screamed out wrestlers' names at the top of their lungs. The wrestlers themselves sometimes spilled out of the ring and came crashing into the. seats, where they were greeted with raucous applause and good-natured heckling. "We definitely gear some of the show toward women," Sugiyama adds, smiling. "Wrestlers like Chigusa are tough, independent and strong-willed; she's almost entirely followed by female fans. Men are afraid of her."