Yubinhaad

Tanaka has joined Sakaigawa-beya, I understand.

The red kesho-mawashi at the far end is from his high school alma mater, Tottori Johoku. Meanwhile, the one with (I assume?) a wolf is from Osaka Sanitary Co., Ltd. It was presented to Mitoryu by the company president, Tomosaburo Uno, a long-time supporter of Nishikido-oyakata I believe.

Any change since you posted that? They're showing fine for me, so it might have just been a temporary outage at the image host.

Two myoseki changes just reported. Sanoyama (ex-Tosayutaka) has switched to Magaki, while Araiso (ex-Tamaasuka) has switched to Kumagatani. Kyokai site isn't updated yet so it's hard to say if they are the owners, although Tosayutaka being in Tokitsukaze lends weight to the owned-by-Toyonoshima theory. As for the vacated myoseki, Sanoyama belongs to Chiyootori and Araiso belongs to Kisenosato.

Slow stats news - 8 perfect Shukun-sho scores were recorded during this basho, a new record. The previous best was 7 from 2015 Hatsu and 2016 Natsu. Three of the scores happened on Day 10 - it's only the second time that has happened, following Day 14 of the 2015 Nagoya basho. Rikishimiezi's perfect score on Day 4 was his 10th overall, making him the second player to reach double-digits. Takanorappa recorded his third perfect score after a long gap, his last one coming in 2013 Aki.

Tatsunami-beya has a new recruit, Mutsumi Kawabata (川端 六満) from Nago city in Okinawa. He is a relative of Meisei. Naruto-beya will have three new rikishi and a yobidashi in May. No individual details so far, but they're all in this picture it seems.

Sankei and others report that Takanohana and the other oyakata agreed in early April that the ichimon should change to a different name. What that will be isn't announced yet as far as I can tell.

A Yomiuri article I saw (now gone, it seems) was titled something like "guidance of young wrestler's behaviour", so I would guess it will be part of the work done at the sumo school. However it would be nice if they took referrals, as there are indeed a few sekitori who could benefit from a refresher course in my opinion. Edit: The original article is gone but here it is thanks to Google cache. And here's the Sanspo article I mentioned in my previous post.

It was mentioned in a short article about a week ago, which mentioned they will be giving instruction on attire and greetings. Oyama served at the sumo school for a long time, while Oshima was director of it in the last few years of his regular oyakata service if I recall correctly. Dekiyama is apparently known for his strictness. Thanks a lot as always for the comprehensive write-up.

I have no time whatsoever for any publication that only deigns to mention sumo when there's a scandal. This is one of those unfortunate incidents that has "gone viral". I think the Kyokai has handled it reasonably well. Given the fact that the Rijicho himself was moved to make statements, perhaps he (or someone else there) recognised the need for swift responses before the narrative spun totally out of control. How long it will rumble on for is anyone's guess, but at the moment I'm inclined to agree with Kintamayama that eventually it will settle down.

Yamatonishiki is the lowest ranking oyakata among those who have served in the Heisei era, even heading Tomozuna-beya for 13 years.

Thanks for that! Having read the other article again it seems the fire department line was from the local organising committee when they were asked what was going on, not the Kyokai.

Dramatic scenes in Maizuru today as 67-year-old Mayor Ryozo Tatami collapsed on the dohyo while delivering his opening address. Luckily a female doctor was in the audience and performed cardiac massage on the mayor, who was later transported to hospital. A city spokesman said the mayor is conscious and able to talk, so that's good news. EDIT: I'm gonna wipe my other paragraph for now, another article states that fire department staff were standing by with a defibrillator (AED), so the announcement was made to clear the dohyo so that the mayor could receive further treatment backstage. So maybe the announcement wasn't directed at the lady doctor after all.

The Nishiiwa-beya building is now complete and everyone is settling in to their new home. Checking out the view from the roof.

I wonder if his first uchideshi is also his first retired deshi - the Kyokai lists Takada as transferred as well, but he's not in the picture and presumably not mentioned by the press articles.