yorikiried by fate

Jeez, don't you tempt me!

I would submit, not quite. It's more like after years and years of watching sumo, you can (almost subconsciously) tell when something's off. I didn't read much justification (or even "hate"; not you, I know) into the various posts here. Just people trying to explain why it felt off. And they did a good job at that IMHO.

Tamanowaka was forced to retire, because they found out his shikona was made by an AI.

This! Very nicely put.

I've kind of solved all this, so thanks for the spark. With a little extra visuals (very few), everything is now very consistent and understandable. Will be part of the update one year from now. Cliffhanger!

Well, this boils down to aesthetics or visual clarity. It's been a long time ago, when I made that decision. I vaguely remember arguing with myself about it. It seems that I wanted to keep the yusho winner row clean, first and foremost. Thus Hoshi > Hokutoumi and a few others (Tamanoshimo > Tamanoumi, Wakamisugi > Wakanohana, Takanohana etc.). In a way, the # of yusho marker is a hint that a name change occured, because – e.g. – Hoshi stops at "1", but is not indicated as a final yusho. If a name change occurs before Ozekihood I resorted to the name in brackets thing. But that's on the lowest tier of events, so visually I didn't care much. starting from the Ozeki rows, it didn't seem necessary anymore, as everyone either changed the name when becoming Ozeki, or at promotion to Yokozuna. Here, the different rows interact with each other, timewise, so the continuity is implied. If you consider the relative sparsity of cases, I accept this problem of clarity, for the sake of visuals. But I'm open for good suggestions.

Yeah, there's some comment about that in the explanations box on the left. The data is indeed pulled from the Doitsubase, therefore treating some foreigners as Japanese, and (some?) naturalized Japanese as foreigners. It's merely the data of the banzuke. Works for me, though, as the numbers shouldn't be tilted very much at any given time. I agree, though, that "Foreigner # records" are a bit silly from that perspective. But hey, we're here for the drama...

It surely looks like that. The previous highscore I could find was 8: XI-90 to XI-92.

Hello peoples of the world, hello fat-guys-in-diapers gawkers! It's time again and here's the meat, already. But still, the extensive comments below might be worthwhile. Whenever I think there's nothing left to improve/do, I seem to receive some inspiration for exactly that. Thus, the graph has seen quite some (mostly cosmetic) work since last year: The two Ozeki promotions triggered me to visually clarify the win-loss indicators of successful Ozeki (re)runs. Naturally, I extended this new scheme to Yokozuna runs as well. The major retirements on the main graph were a bit redone. I never really liked how they visually dominated, so I did the natural thing and likened them to the intai scheme of the lower part of the graph. The record indicators (most ex-champions on the banuke etc.) have been redone. They now don't look like shit anymore. New record indicators for Most Foreigners at the different levels of interest added. The win indicators for 12- win yusho and playoff yusho got a mild touch-up in order to visually emphazise the 12- win yusho. The two Yokozuna event rows, which are naturally dominated by whitespace, are now additionally used to indicate Yokozuna eras. The indicators (circles/rings) that show the amount of non-competing former champions have been reviewed, particularly in respect to the color coding. Each completely absent ex-champion is now represented by a white fill, independent of where he's placed on the banzuke. Only if a former champion actually competed for at least a single bout in a lower division, the circle/ring gets colored. Also the order of colored vs. non-colored rings has been reversed. As for the visual info provided by the graph for 2023: In May, we saw the highest number of former champions on any banzuke. That number is 13. This was immediatly rectified by the intai of Ichinojo and Tochinoshin, which let the number drop to 11 for July. Together with the retirement of Tokushoryu we therefore had three ex-champion intai this year, which is not super common, but also not explicitly rare. In March we had another record: Five former champions didn't compete for the Makuuchi yusho, courtesy of Tochinoshin, Ichinojo, Asanoyama and Tokushoryu all competing in Juryo (which is a record by itself), while Terunofuji took another 15-day breather. Tied rank 2 in that category (four non-Makuuchi-competing ex-champions) occured three times: Twice this year (January and May) and once way back in V-2000, when Yokozuna Musashimaru and Ozeki Musoyama were out, while Kotonishiki and Mitoizumi were placed in Juryo and both additionally didn't turn up (covered by the kosho rule back then). Each banzuke of the year had extended sanyaku ranks. Such a full extension year happened twice before, namely 1993 and 1961. With the current results, this streak of extended sanyaku ranks is bound to end at 8 (IX-22 to XI-23). This is the third longest streak of extended sanyaku ranks after III-92 to I-94 and VII-60 to V-62 (both 12). There were three Ozeki yusho this year. This last happened in 2012, which included Harumafuji's Yokozuna run and Baruto's one-off yusho. There was only one Yokozuna yusho this year, which happened only once before, which was last year. Zero Yokozuna yusho happened only in 1992, just before and including part of the Yokozuna-less couple of months prior to Akebono's ascension. While the amount of foreigners at several levels has principally stabilized (certainly due to the protective restrictions set up by the NSK), we saw a low outlier in November, with only six Makuuchi foreigners on the banzuke. You have to go back to 2003/2004 to find such a low number. This is just when Asashoryu kicked (shoved?) off at the top, and the slower members of the Second Mongolian Wave slowly dripped into Makuuchi. As for the elephant in the room: For a second year in a row, the wins-per yusho average was 12.33. Which is amazingly bad. My grandmother could currently yusho. And she's dead! On Takayasu's grave it will be written: "He couldn't even yusho while the wins-per-yusho average was 12.33 for the second year running!" Well, probably not. It will most likely say "He was a nice chap." OK, Terunofuji is absent a lot. But he wouldn't necessarily help either. With 8 career yusho, he already has three yusho won with only 12 wins. The only other ex-champions with 3+ Makuuchi yusho that amassed at least three 12- wins yusho are: Musashimaru (1x11, 3x12 with 12 career yusho), Chiyonofuji (4x12; 31), and Wajima (3x12; 14). So the weakness of the current yusho level made me consider if I could represent that visually. As it turned out: Yes I could! But with a caveat. The measure that I applied goes like this: Take a banzuke. Look at all former champions that compete for the Makuuchi yusho. Look at all the yusho those guys had so far and average the necessary wins they needed for their accumulated yusho. Voila. This can be plotted onto the graph. The problem is only, that the each datapoint is somewhere between 12 and 14.5, while the graph generally shows stuff between 0 and 63. Of course you could map the values, sneak in some extra labelling and whatnot. And I did! But this is so specific that I decided to leave that feature out of the "normal" Graph. As a fan service to the real afficionados I have attached the extended version here. There you can learn – once more – how awsome Hakuho was, how pathetic the current crop is, and how freakish the banzuke/competition situation of July 1972 was. Comment, like, subscribe, make me feel worthy.

I don't buy any foreigners' angle. The number of foreign sekitori is on the level of the early to mid 2000s and has been already for five years. The Great Foreign Devils Purge after the yaocho scandal together with one-furry-per-heya rule had some lasting effects without any change in trajectory except for levelling out. If someone based that decision on a perceived foreigner problem, it's a misconception.

Always remember: When Ama made it to Ozeki and got a new shikona awarded, people were saying, or quoted saying [paraphrased], "Wow, Isegahama-oyakata really must think that Ama one day might yusho!"

I like this Mr. Yamauchi. The message might be debateable, but I understand his point. If I had to choose what's more troubling for sumo as a whole: A) A Maegashira newbie winning the yusho with 11-4, or B) an Ozeki winning the yusho 11-4 against a Maegashira newbie with "clever" sumo, I know my choice for sure.

Maybe they fought in non-euclidian space?

I guess his tailor (aka Akhmet the Tent Maker) has cornered the market for all cloth in a narrow Pantone range.