Eikokurai

Yes, that is good. I’ve watched it a few times. There is or was another documentary series from Japanese TV available on YT that focused more on kimarite and famous bouts. Can’t remember what it was called.

We shouldn't forget the 'long tail' in all this. Digital platforms have made it possible to make small profits relatively easily and cheaply by reaching a globally distributed niche market. The Kyokai/NHK can do no more than simply dump its raw basho footage somewhere and make it available for a small fee. This lo-fi approach would cost them almost nothing (server space, basically) and turn what it is currently a dormant asset into something generating some revenue, no matter how small. That's probably the thinking behind the YT project. If even only 1000 people worldwide pay $8.99 for one month to view raw basho footage, that's nearly $9,000 of 'free' revenue they would otherwise not have taken. Anything more complicated and you need a business case to justify the investment of time, money and manpower, which reduces the likelihood of it ever happening. So as much as I'd like a properly edited digest of old basho, I guess it won't happen if the only economically viable option is a simple 'upload and charge for it' model.

About 18 months ago I started a little side project which I abandoned pretty quickly as life got in the way but which I’d like to return to. It was basically a sumo almanac with two-page reviews of basho (six-basho era only, for my sanity) summarizing the key storylines such as the yusho race, new makuuchi guys, new sanyaku, etc as well as interesting trivia about kimarite and whatever else I could find. I also intended to note any lower-division stuff worthy of attention like the debut of a future Yokozuna or something and to write in such a way that narratives that crossed basho would link together, e.g. mentioning the first record in an Ozeki run. It was entirely based on my analysis of stats on the sumo DB and whatever I could Google, but you’d be surprised how much you can write just about that. I even had to cut a lot of stuff to fit onto two pages. I did it for 1958 only before shelving it as the hours of research needed just for that one year made catching up to 2019 and beyond a daunting task (one year alone is 12 pages of writing). Anyway, to get to the point, I reckon the Kyokai could do something similar (and better) with basho videos, a good editor and some documentary-style narration. I’d pay for that.

If the archive builds to a decent size, I might be persuaded to get a month and then see if I can download as many of the videos as possible into a hard drive. That price is too high to pay every month.

Different thread (the honbasho one). Easy to miss throwaway comments there.

:)

Oh, yeah. Kakuryu. That's his name.

Weren’t some basho held in a baseball ground during the war? What did they do there, pad out the pitching mound? Edit: Seems it was still a raised dohyo: https://sumocards.blogspot.com/2018/12/when-sumo-wrestling-took-over-baseball.html?m=1

Unless I’m misunderstanding something or have done this query wrong, shouldn’t Terunofuji have three doten-yusho to his name following that 13-2D playoff loss to Takakeisho in November? http://sumodb.sumogames.de/Query.aspx?show_form=0&group_by=rikishi&form1_yd=on&form1_m=on&group_expand=on&offset=100

“80% of Yokozuna longevity is not showing up”.

Harmless in the scheme of things! :)

Cage it. WWE style. Think of all the new kimarite that could come out of turning the dohyo into a truly three-dimensional space.

As an editor, I’d have told John to find a better analogy than that and come back. It’s not a good comparison. But, I’m happy to accept the general sentiment that believing without evidence is acting on faith, so let’s leave that there. My faith leads me to think the problem is less how far they fall and more where they land. Those surfaces around the dohyo do nothing to protect a rikishi from a fall.

I think it was tongue in cheek. Rob has shown himself to have a sense of humour in the past.

Sad news, but 82 is a good innings, as we say. The sort of age where you celebrate the person’s life as much as mourn their passing.