New Juryo for Nagoya 2025

[Bunbukuchagama 827]

57 minutes ago, sahaven111 said:

Am I missing something? I'm not aware of how Kasuganishiki relates to this as he certainly has nothing to do with the banzuke making process, and I can't find a single instance on his record of getting a demotion worthy score yet staying in Juryo. If anything, looking at his record brings back fond memories of a time when rikishi were demoted more than a rank and a half for a bad makekoshi.

Yaocho. 

[Reonito 1,613]

3 hours ago, Bunbukuchagama said:

Aren't those basically the same people? 

Different groups of oyakata. I'm not sure whether there's an overlap and how much. I think "the judging department" or "shimpan" is who makes the banzuke, and I'm not sure what the term is for the torikumi duties. I'm generally not very up on how oyakata duties work, so I'm sure someone more informed will chime in and correct me.

[Yarimotsu 614]

9 hours ago, Reonito said:

It's not like Miyanokaze is an established juryo vet, but maybe just crossing the sekitori threshold once counts for something...

I'd argue that it certainly does, and I think they might be making juryo a hard line to cross for the first time for this reason. Think about all the effort and money that has to be spent to get a new Rikishi into juryo. Mawashi and kesho mawashi, change in rank and privilege and all that comes with sekitorihood - the more I think about it, the less surprising it is that they would want first-timers to juryo to be given a second chance in a tie, and request a fairly undeniable record from newcomers to enter. The disappointment of a one-basho juryo visitor for all involved in funding that and the Rikishi himself must be pretty high.

[Yarimotsu 614]

5 hours ago, Bunbukuchagama said:

I am less than happy. He is in the wrong sport. 

Sumo may not suit his body, but he does beautiful sumo. Arguably it is the "wrong" sport for all Rikishi due to the risks involved, but I don't think we'd be commenting here if we thought that way.

[Bunbukuchagama 827]

1 hour ago, Yarimotsu said:

Sumo may not suit his body, but he does beautiful sumo. Arguably it is the "wrong" sport for all Rikishi due to the risks involved, but I don't think we'd be commenting here if we thought that way.

Somebody should tell him that competitive bodybuilding exists. 

And no, I don't find his sumo beautiful.

[Akinomaki 41,180]

5 hours ago, Reonito said:

Different groups of oyakata. I'm not sure whether there's an overlap and how much. I think "the judging department" or "shimpan" is who makes the banzuke, and I'm not sure what the term is for the torikumi duties. I'm generally not very up on how oyakata duties work, so I'm sure someone more informed will chime in and correct me.

All done by the shimpan department: they make the banzuke, the torikumi and sit at the ringside, but not all do every of these tasks. Musoyama(Fujishima) stopped to do shimpan duties and only does the torikumi and banzuke for a while now

On 27/03/2024 at 09:49, Akinomaki said:

https://www.sumo.or.jp/IrohaKyokai/rijikai/

Fujishima stays as deputy head shimpan only in the responsibility for the torikumi,

There are no oyakata who only do the banzuke

[Ryoshishokunin 330]

Yeah, but given that it's a huge committee there's every chance that the guys doing the torikumi for lower juryo aren't the same blokes doing the bazuke for the same section—or one or the other attracts additional attention from more of the group.  

[Asashosakari 19,942]

1 hour ago, Ryoshishokunin said:

Yeah, but given that it's a huge committee there's every chance that the guys doing the torikumi for lower juryo aren't the same blokes doing the bazuke for the same section—or one or the other attracts additional attention from more of the group.  

I'm relatively sure that the entire committee of 24 decides on the rankings collectively at least down to the end of juryo, maybe even to Ms15; that's the important stuff after all, and it would be odd to see them take short cuts that don't allow every voice to be represented. Everything further down may well be handled by multiple sub-groups simultaneously for time reasons (you sure don't need 24 people to concern themselves with who should be Sd73w).

The scheduling must be done by a rotating crew, simply because the torikumi work is done while bouts are happening and thus some shimpan are around the dohyo. There won't be anybody (other than fixed presence Fujishima as mentioned by Akinomaki) who's always working on the makuuchi or the juryo torikumi specifically.

[Gurowake 4,123]

Yeah, the disconnect is that Juryo promotions are going to be decided on by the entire judging department, while the torikumi are certainly not going to be.  It's very easy to be able to take a vote on all the important things once the results are finalized, but it's somewhat more difficult to assess what might happen depending on certain choices of torikumi and their results, so whichever of the shimpan are creating the torikumi will have some opinion, and that need not be shared by the entire department. 

Even the whole idea that there's a regimented way of determining who will be promoted is likely not something that's 100% true, as much as we'd like it to be.  Each Oyakata likely has their own ideas, and as long as they're abiding by the fundamental rules of making a banzuke, those ideas need not be consistent from section to section of the banzuke, let alone basho to basho.  When you consider the dozens of people involved in the decisions, it's going to have irregularities all over the place given the relative lack of hard-and-fast rules.

Edited May 29 by Gurowake

[Asashosakari 19,942]

6 hours ago, Gurowake said:

Even the whole idea that there's a regimented way of determining who will be promoted is likely not something that's 100% true, as much as we'd like it to be.  Each Oyakata likely has their own ideas, and as long as they're abiding by the fundamental rules of making a banzuke, those ideas need not be consistent from section to section of the banzuke, let alone basho to basho.  When you consider the dozens of people involved in the decisions, it's going to have irregularities all over the place given the relative lack of hard-and-fast rules.

To be fair, specifically in regards to the juryo promotions nobody really believed that there were ever consistent rules to begin with. (Never proved better than by that brief period where they suddenly appeared to treat exchange bout results as super-important and produced decisions like Kaisho over WMH here.) The "strict numbers" thing I ended up outlining about half a year ago was mainly just in reaction to their decisions having become consistently harsh against the makushita contenders, which seemed to be a strong break from their typically hard-to-classify approach.

I'm not quite ready to give up on it, in any case. The tie-breaking of close decisions was always going to be the most contentious part (I know I'm stating the obvious here; that's what "close decision" implies). And in a way this one was perhaps the perfect storm of circumstances: a makushita guy who's as untested at the highest Ms level as one can possibly be, ranked right at the end of the top 5 promotion zone, versus a freshly promoted juryo rikishi who didn't look out of place at that level.

In the end, if it turns out that the formula continues to work for everything except exact ties, that would already be a big improvement over how it used to be, in our understanding of the process as well as in how the process affects the rikishi involved (which is after all the truly important part of all this). But of course it's equally possible that we're only a few more changes of the shimpan department roster away from getting something totally different again, or that this Miyanokaze-over-Kyokukaiyu decision was already the first instance of something new.

Edited May 29 by Asashosakari

[Asashosakari 19,942]

BTW, I want to note that the rikishi who got shafted has his shisho and an affiliated oyakata on the banzuke committee, while the one who got saved does not.

[Tigerboy1966 1,539]

9 hours ago, Asashosakari said:

The "strict numbers" thing I ended up outlining about half a year ago

Any chance you can link to this. I would like to read it,

[Asashosakari 19,942]

6 hours ago, Tigerboy1966 said:

Any chance you can link to this. I would like to read it,

Here you go.

[Reonito 1,613]

1 hour ago, Asashosakari said:

Here you go.

Looking back at it, I guess we had only one example of a tie...

J10w 5-10   Ms2w 4-3    5+1 = 6      6.0    Ms promoted

[Koorifuu 1,079]

39 minutes ago, Reonito said:

Looking back at it, I guess we had only one example of a tie...

J10w 5-10   Ms2w 4-3    5+1 = 6      6.0    Ms promoted

First thought that comes to mind: there might be another, softer, line between ms1~3 and ms4~5 for fringe shootout cases like this.

Or it could really be that Kyokukaiyu not being challenged with a Darwin battle does really make a difference.

Or it just depends on their whims.

Probably the last one.

Edited May 30 by Koorifuu

[Oskanohana 297]

On 28/05/2025 at 23:54, sahaven111 said:

Am I missing something? I'm not aware of how Kasuganishiki relates to this as he certainly has nothing to do with the banzuke making process, and I can't find a single instance on his record of getting a demotion worthy score yet staying in Juryo. If anything, looking at his record brings back fond memories of a time when rikishi were demoted more than a rank and a half for a bad makekoshi.

Sorry for the late response, but I was referring to Kasuganishiki being famously one of the head honchos of the 2011 yaocho scandal. If my memory serves me right, he had some kind of shop who made kesho-mawashi and things like that and they used it for payments or whatever, but maybe I'm talking out my ass in this last part. The first part is just the truth.