RabidJohn

Aye, that's purple. It's one of the hardest colours to reproduce digitally. My former editor used to hate anything purple, mainly because something in the process of converting RGB to CYMK for printing doesn't like it either! Bit of a tangent, but my avatar is one of his scans from my transparency...

@AkinomakiI didn't know purple tassles were rank-restricted, so thank you for that info. The colour repro must be out though, because they look navy blue to me in both the above photo and the linked article.

Was it wrong of me to laugh at Baruto's gyoji-bowling KO? It wasn't so much the KO as the non-reaction of the ringside rikishi and shimpan. I remember Chiyonofuji admitting to blacking out briefly in a loss to Konishiki. It's the one where he ends up on his back in the second row of seats - late 80s some time. Chiyonofuji said he felt the impact of the tsuppari, but didn't not remember the fall, and he came to on the floor.

As a former coal miner (i.e. working in an exclusively male environment), foul and abusive language was an everyday part of the job. I was once threatened with having my eye poked out and being skull-f****** to death, which I thought was hilariously inventive (and clearly not a serious threat). So, my first reaction to this news was "Oh bollocks - the snowflake generation has arrived in ozumo". After some brief reflection, however, like Churaumi I believe there must surely be something more serious than "harsh talk" for the police to get involved.

I added a necro-vote for Britney Spears...

I see I'm currently in the majority voting 'No', but I'd have preferred an 'Of course not, you silly bugger!" option.

I greatly doubt it was your intent, but using Hakuho as a forum name and a photo of Hakuho as an avatar could give the impression of "posing as a real rikishi", which is clearly against the Forum guidelines. Are you sure you couldn't live with 'H4kuho' or 'Hakuh0', or something like that? Why deny yourself the pleasure of being part of this community?

Well, you learn something every day! I don't read Japanese, but I know about hiragana and katakana. I also have a fairly ignorant gaijin notion of 'hentai', so I did a proper double-take when I saw this, wondering "does that have its own characters?"! Thankfully, Google put me straight...

Has there been an outbreak of vitiligo? Look forward to seeing some distinctly piebald rikishi in July according to this^.

I hope they don't add fake cheers to images of an empty Kokugikan. If they're gonna go down that route, they may as well greenscreen in a fake audience - or one of the fake backgrounds suggested on this forum some time ago. Someone send them a link!

I hadn't seen the post-training ritual before. Is that common to all heya?

If I can jump in late here, play-offs are not official tournament bouts. When the no-hoper swings his bow after musubi no ichiban on senshuraku the tournament is over - whether or not the result is a draw. While play-offs are fought every bit as seriously as tournament bouts, they occur after the basho has finished, and their purpose is solely to decide the yusho; i.e. who gets the trophies and prizes. This is why you see results recorded as 14-1-Y/D rather than 15-1/14-2, for example. That's the why, but yeah, it does slightly skew some head-to-head records, which must be very galling for the OCD statisticians out there.

I always thought that was only possible because of the kabu wealth of the Hanada clan. It's certainly unique among the handful who've been offered ichidai toshiyori. Taiho and Kitanoumi branched off to form their own heya, and Chiyonofuji turned it down so he could get Kokonoe.

As it's 1st June, I call it summer of 2020 right now, so I assume you mean 2022, the year of Miyagino's 65th birthday. The current lay-off will be doing Hakuho a world of good in terms of injury recovery, so I've no doubt he's going to breeze past the rescheduled Olympics in 2021. But I've also got no doubt that Hakuho's ichidai toshiyori is a done deal, which is why he hasn't obtained a kabu yet. If I'm wrong, however, Hakuho doesn't need to remain active until Miyagino retires. As a yokozuna he gets up to 5 years as Hakuho-oyakata without a kabu.

Er, he did... I not saying there weren't factions that disliked him, but Kokonoe-oyakata was a director from 2008-2011 when he retired due to one of his rikishi admitting to match-fixing. He was back on the board from 2012-14 as operations director, which is an executive position as far as I'm aware. He cited lack of support as his reason for not running for re-election after that.