Yamanashi

Yokozuna Kakuryu has joined Facebook https://www.facebook.com/kakuryu71/ and Twitter

I will miss the "Zan" brothers (Shoho- and Tochio-). To me they were the Newman and Redford of Ozumo. The video of Nagoya 2013 against Goeido was great: he slaps him and facepalms him, then offers to help him up. The crowd seemed to react to the assertive way he pulled off his sagari.

I follow Narutobeya on Twitter and Instagram, so I'm creating this topic to record my news and views (sometimes incorrect/lamebrain; that's why I've cordoned it off in its own topic!)

Photos and videos of Narutobeya working out for the coming basho. Oshoma in white mawashi; no sign of Hokuozan (Hagiwara), but Oshoumi is walking around (with several cupping marks on his back) and looks like he might be active this basho. The Old Man is lending a shoulder.

The Makushita-joi is stuffed with college grads, old veterans and foreigners. What an exciting mix.

Well, he's 25 and a college grad, so ... For all these college guys, the good news is they are more mature than your average 17-year-old. The bad news is they are 5-7 years older than your average 17-year old (Delgerbayar had to spend an extra year hanging out in the heya, because foreigners with degrees from Japanese Universities might start slaughtering sheep in the heya unless they are taught proper manners.)

Banzuke pic in the Nagoya lodging, along with the Oshoma-points-at-his-name-in-front-of-the-heya photo https://www.instagram.com/p/CfTZXjlu66A/

I can imagine the tension that an Oyakata must feel. You can only have one foreigner in your heya, and you'd like him to become a sekitori; if you choose unwisely, you are stuck with an underperformer for 5-15 years. There are several foreign rikishi who are fan favorites who never made it to Juryo, and the Oyakata can't pick another foreigner until they leave. Masutoo comes to mind: 16 years in Ozumo and made it to Ms 8.

Sorry, I didn't make that clear. After his retirement, he was outspoken (well, OK, this is Japan) about the PRC move to demote Mongolian culture in Inner Mongolia (e.g., teaching only Mandarin in the schools).

Sokokurai also from Inner Mongolia, also Chinese. It's an autonomous region of the PRC, with 80% Han Chinese and 18% Mongolian (more Mongolians there than in Mongolia!).

Thanks, I missed him. His record as rikishi suggests that he just made the cut for Toshiyori status, even under the previous rules (25 basho in Juryo).

I have a lot of questions, which maybe the esteemed lights of SumoForum may shed some light on. These are brought to the surface by the Shohozan intai. 1) The current holders of kabu have the following highest ranks: Y 7; O 12; S 26; K 18; M1-M8 33; M9-M16 8; J 0; vacant 1; total 105. Would you expect that the average HR of new kabu holders will rise over the next several years? 2) Is Shohozan likely to have a danpatsu-shiki in the Kokugikan? 3) What is the level of authority (sorry, best word I could think of) that the NSK has over the passing down of toshiyori-kabu, relative to the kabu holder? Has that changed over the last ten years or so? 4) The nominal job title of the Oyakata not running a heya or holding upper management positions seems to be "coach at [ ] stable." How many of these don't actively coach rikishi, but hold a salary? 5) If the sanyo system becomes a mere formality, why would any 65-year-old kabu holder retire unless he is not healthy enough to come to work?

Shimanoumi has 18 basho in Makuuchi, and at M8 with a 7-8 he'll get his 20; 8 basho in Juryo, so he'll get 30 basho as Sekitori. If he is inheriting Izutsu, he already has enough basho to qualify anyway.

The staple diet is meat and dairy products (nomadic food): mutton, goat, beef; cow or mare's milk, etc. Most breads and grains are borrowed from other cultures (as is vodka). Observant Jews should maybe bring their own food along.

... and I hear he likes beer!

Gee, it's a little early to award the Most Darkly Cynical Take Award for 2022, but this might have already scared off the competition.

Q: If one Sekitori can go around the corner in four weeks, how long does it take four Sekitori to go around the corner? a) four weeks b) one week c) 3.14159 weeks d) there are too many Sekitori to answer the question.

Thanks for the heads-up, I will look for this.

Shibatayama still looks like he was dropped into his clothes from a second-story window. This was a good recap of events. I will look for other videos from them.

Interesting point. It made me think about Clark Kent being roughed up by some hooligans: he has to beat them so they'll stop bothering him, but he can't let them know he's Superman. So, he "lets" one guy hit another guy by "mistake" and then another attacker "trips" and Clark Kent gets away, while Lois Lane says "Gee, Clark, you were lucky you weren't killed!" And Shodai -- er, Clark -- smiles wryly to himself.

About a year ago I started one of many unfinished projects, looking at the "strength" of a basho in terms of career high ranks: that is, not only the Y's and O's, but the future Y's and O's and S's, etc. Obviously, you can't do this for this year's or last year's basho, but you can go back, say 10 years and find out (in retrospect) what an awesome batch of career-wise awesome wrestlers were present at that basho. I am out of town and working on other things right now, but I remember clearly that the most awesome basho, going back to ~2000, was the Natsu 2008 tournament won by Kotooshu (go figure!). I will attempt to find my spreadsheet in a week or so when I am back in town. IIRC I took career high ranks and then awarded points for Yokozuna (10), Ozeki (8), etc. That sounds like the SOS approach you may be talking about here. Someday after I retire, I may finish all these projects and post them as a set. That should scare away a good number of forum members.

So it's almost a given, going forward, that the answer to the question "Gee, Mitakeumi is heading toward a MK; I wonder if he's injured?" is "Yes."

No, that wasn't the problem. It's my lack of Japanese reading skills; way too embarrassing* to give the kid's "Google" name and get drilled by my fellow SFers. *"Shame and eternal shame, nothing but shame." [Henry V, act 4, scene 5]

He's on the Narutobeya Instagram page; I hesitated to post because the NSK hadn't announced it on the website. Thanks for catching this. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cef-7hlredF/

Some good thoughts here. I don't feel qualified to give qualitative judgments on historic Ozeki, as I haven't followed the sport for as long as many of you have. Because of that, I don't have a feel for whether this is an anomalous period in Ozumo. There hasn't been an Ozeki -> Jonidan -> Yokozuna path before, and it seems that Asanoyama's less-than-intai punishment is unique [whether that matters depends on how far he comes back].