Eikokurai

I mean, a guy was still murdered … maybe not the time for levity.

Previous talk about his banzuke presence and rank reminds me how I’d said that if Takakeisho had failed to clear kadoban, Hakuho would have had to be a Yokozuna-Ozeki for the first time in his career. How novel it would have been to have a greyed-out Yokozuna-Ozeki slot on the banzuke.

I thought I'd spin this off from the 'underrated/overlooked' thread. In the Hakuho retirement thread, @sumojoann wrote about seeing Ichinojo face Hakuho in his debut Makuuchi basho and it reminded me how much of a splash Ichi made on his arrival in sumo, cruising through Makushita and Juryo and then stunning everyone with a 13-2 debut jun-yusho in which he also took a Yokozuna scalp. He's often ridiculed on the forum and elsewhere for appearing lazy (even accounting for back injuries) and unfocused, and never seems to be taken very seriously, but when you actually delve into his career, I think he's rudely undervalued. He's spent 11 of 39 Makuuchi basho in the sanyaku (8 as Sekiwake, 3 as Komusubi) and won eight kinboshi. He also added a second seriously impressive 14-1 jun-yusho in 2019, losing only to Hakuho Tochinoshin. I suppose people had high hopes for him after that breakout year in 2014, something which has coloured their judgement of him since. The point here is not to argue that he's actually secretly amazing, only that he's much better than often given credit for. Who else do you think deserves more love than they usually get?

Something or someone underappreciated remains underappreciated even if someone appreciates them, since it’s about how they appreciated as a whole. My mum appreciates me, but nobody else does, so I’m underappreciated by society. :)

That’s like Evergrande taking away the office coffee machine to help its debt crisis. Losing one salary for a couple of months will barely make a debt in Hakuho’s retirement payout, and I’d like to think they’ve planned for his retirement for years. It’s not as if was a surprise.

No because the under is the key part of the phrase.

I apologize for my part in derailing this thread (though I’m not sure there is much to say about Ichinojo getting a Japanese passport).

And the future of sumo will be secured, for the Japanese love luxury goods. Those rare heya spots will become much sought after status symbols.

And of course the Kyokai knew this was a risk which is why they forced out Asashoryu, Harumafuji and Takanoiwa before they could become Oyakata. It clear there is a Mongolian conspiracy and a Japanese counter-conspiracy.

When all the Mongolians are running the Kyokai, they’ll end the policy of needing to naturalize to become an Oyakata and remove the limits on foreign rikishi. It’s all part of the long game.

Yes, brain fart. He lost out on the yusho to Hakuho. Thanks!

Probably more reflective of the fact it was A) only rumors to begin with so people maybe held back until things were more certain and B) there is far too much to say. I know I decided to post only a short initial reaction and to take my time over a more thoughtful retrospective of his career. How can you just fire off a paragraph or two about the most successful rikishi of all time?

They probably thought it was Hasselhoff retiring.

I’ve only just realized his name is spelled wrong in the thread title: Hakuko.

Answering myself: He does and has had for years.

Does he have Japanese citizenship?

I think if you go back and watch footage from the first half of his Yokozuna period, you’ll find he had plenty of closely fought contests with the likes of Kotooshu, Baruto and Goeido (who beat him three times in a row once). You also left out the pretty long list of guys who have perfect 1-0 records against him, including Takanoiwa and Arawashi who took kinboshi in their only ever meetings! Even Orora was unbeaten against the GOAT.

Yes, I realised right away but you’re too quick off the draw and quoted me before I deleted it. You must have had your finger on the trigger.

I concur. Everyone always bangs on about his 45 yusho, but never mention that he didn’t win 58 yusho. Pff. Call me when he’s won more than he hasn’t.

Just by pure mathematics though, the more basho there are, the more you can win, and your opponents would suffer the same problems anyway so it ought to even out. That’s why we always talk about the modern era versus pre-modern when Yokozuna could only win a max of 2 yusho a year. The real answer though is one-day tournaments 365 days a year.

Maybe if we move to 12 basho a year.

Sure, but we were comparing careers as whole above. Things even out there, literally: Hakuho fought 84 last-day bouts as a sekitori; Chiyonofuji fought … 84.

Chiyonofuji had 59 basho as Yokozuna and 81 in Makuuchi; Hakuho has had 84 and 103. Chiyonofuji only edges on it career basho (125 to 122). I’d still give this one to Hakuho. Edit: Actually, just to immediately counter my own argument, Hakuho went kyujo way more than Chiyonofuji. The latter only missed six full basho and had five part-kyujo as a sekitori. Hakuho has had more than that in the past four years. They’re about even I guess.

In geological time scale, there’s only ‘eon’ and ‘supereon’ which are bigger.

End of an era, for me quite literally as my first basho was the first of his tsuna-run yusho (Haru 2007) so my sumo ‘career’ has matched his Yokozuna tenure almost exactly. I’m glad to see the saga draw to a close though, tbh. He hasn’t really been part of sumo for a couple of years anyway, other than the occasional celebrity cameo. It’s good to draw a line under it so we can do a proper career retrospective without the spectre of his decline haunting us. I’ll probably write something more meaningful later, but for now just this.