Seiyashi

No yeah I'm aware of the kanji. Looking at pre-COVID basho, at least for last year, Nagoya and Kyushu have significantly less than the three Tokyo basho and Osaka. And the year before that, Kyushu also has less.

Kyushu and Nagoya seem to have less kensho. Does that suggest that some of the sponsors for Tokyo basho are Kanto only?

Was this a pun? XD

Considering their choice of career, rikishi are probably not insured. But if they are, some of these suits can be brought because of the insurers (both the rikishi's insurers and the town's insurers?) disagreeing rather than the involved persons themselves. At least in the common-law world, these suits are brought in the name of the involved parties but are really conducted by the insurers and their attorneys; the parties themselves receive the payouts from the insurers first and then the insurers go to court to apportion the loss amongst themselves. I agree it's not a good look, but the reality is probably less acrimonious than it seems.

Doesn't that still leave 1 spare room? Or is he saying it would be desirable to have more spares so sekitori can immediately move in?

I count nine sekitori at the combo practice. That said, if these go on till the 22nd, there's plenty of opportunities for Asanoyama to do so; he might just have wanted to wait and see who turns up and what these sessions were like before actually turning up himself, and got upstaged by the other two ozeki and Hakuho showing up from the get-go.

Does he mean pre-COVID days, or the days where quite a few other implements from different sports (like golf clubs) were used?

Yep, correct. He's mentioned in the articles under the juryo heading with Nishikigi (my guess is if you're using Google Translate, there's a pretty good chance his shikona will be mistranslated). (EDIT: checked with GT and it is indeed omitted entirely.) It's mentioned in particular that he had tachi-ai practice with Ikioi as well.

Considering that Hakuho is generally agreed to be a serious doubt for November anyway, I don't think he entered specifically to thrash Shodai like he did Asanoyama the last time. More likely he decided he needed to, er, show up to remind everyone including the YDC geezers that he was still alive, intending to do sumo, and conveniently got in a word about injuries and healing from them. That said, he's now made Kakuryu look a little worse, because so much less is known about Kakuryu's condition; some wag is bound to say "Hakuho showed up as befits a yokozuna, even with bum knees recovering from surgery. What's Kakuryu got? High WBC count? Pfffffft!"

I don't know about Kumamoto, but Kagoshima (further south of Kumamoto on Kyushu) has been often compared to Naples - both being by bays, active volcanos, and inhabited by relatively hot-tempered people. Might have something to do with the climate...

As with everything there's probably examples and counterexamples. Endo, for someone relatively early in his career, already owns the Kitajin kabu even though he's peaked at komusubi so far. On the other hand, from what I understand, Goeido didn't have a stock until the NSK scrambled to give him the Takekuma name on his retirement, despite him being the longest serving ozeki at the time. I guess the difference lies in the long term planning, and whether you can actually make a career outside sumo. More and more sumotori have degrees nowadays and in theory, it should be easier for them to find reasonably-paying jobs outside the NSK. If they can be assured of one, especially those with family businesses like Abi, then I'd agree they'd take the yusho. But for those who're in it for the passion, or who don't have an alternative, they might want the kabu more - even though ozeki isn't a straight path to a kabu, it does give you 3 years grace to wait for one (especially at this point in time). And I'd think that an ozeki borrowing a kabu would be less likely to be asked to leave the NSK outright to make way for another rikishi as compared to a maegashira.

Yeah, I know the feeling. Especially for those "one and done" sanyaku rikishi - even though they get called "ex sekiwake" it feels a bit misleading when their only tournament at the rank is a 4-11 or something similar.

At the risk of tootling my own trumpet, what's the odds I write this just as @John Gunning puts out an article on the exact same topic. Greatly enjoyed that article.

Yeah, before Terunofuji, Tochinoshin pretty much was the poster rikishi for comeback story. It was a shame to see the way his ozeki career played out, but he basically has got it all as far as my question is concerrned. I'd wholly agree - I've said somewhere else that Tokushoryu was the surprise winner as far as makujiri go because he is the only makujiri winner who wasn't, or wouldn't go on to be, sanyaku material. His career is technically not over yet, but I highly doubt he'll be surprising us with an appearance in sanyaku anytime soon. For him, the yusho really was a smash and grab kind of thing which absolutely no one saw coming, and because of his makujiri status at the time it will be doubly memorable. Twenty years from now, when the next makujiri goes on a yusho run, the broadcasts will be going "since Tokushoryu in 2020". It appears that ozeki without a yusho during their tenure or promotion run are a bit of a rarity, because you'd expect that rikishi with the quality of sumo necessary to get there would chalk up a yusho at some point. So I guess when I asked the question, the comparison really was between Takayasu (being the only ozeki with no yusho in recent memory) and Mitakeumi. I'd agree Shodai's career is now more successful than Mitakeumi's. That said, since all three ozeki have yet to win another yusho, I'll modify my question a bit. How meaningful is an ozeki career without an ozeki yusho, even if the person in question won a yusho otherwise? This is sort of inspired by Wakanohana III, who goes down in history as the only yokozuna not to win a championship as yokozuna (winning as ozeki; cf Futahaguro who won none at all), and who would have been remembered as a great ozeki like Takanohana I had he not been promoted. I see some elements of the same kind of talk around Takakeisho, especially back when he was blighted by repeated injuries. Then there's also Tochinoshin and Terunofuji, who went on great runs to get promoted to ozeki but didn't really do much with the rank. It's an interesting contrast when you consider that ozeki is (titularly) the best rank on the banzuke since yokozuna were historically ozeki as well, but my perception of them have always been "flakier yokozuna wannabes". It appears that the default expectation for an ok ozeki is to win at least one yusho, and the benchmark for the best ozeki career seems to be five yusho (Kaio and Wakanohana III), but even from there it's a great jump to the dai-yokozuna mark of 10 yusho. The historical prestige of the rank seems to be a bit lost with the modern yokozuna system, especially with one as strong as Hakuho (and two other junior yokozuna reaching significant yusho levels during his tenure - Harumafuji and Kakuryu).

With Shodai's promotion, Mitakeumi has seen yet another person pass by him to Ozeki. I'm not quiet about my dislike for him for talking relatively big, but then it occurred to me - Mitakeumi still has got 2 yusho, nothing to sneeze at, and has held down junior sanyaku for quite a while. Compared to someone like say, Takayasu or the other one-time maegashira yusho winners, you could argue his career is more successful, whether monetarily or reputationally. So, if it were you, which would you prefer and why? To win a yusho once but not to break sanyaku, or to reach ozeki, hold it for a while, but not win a yusho?