Katsunorifuji

Likewise on my post. Apologies if anyone took offense or thought I was making light of the situation. As I mentioned in my initial post, health and safety are the most important things for the rikishi and all people in general.

Good points. If we are looking at a one basho delay then most of the guys fighting injured seem to benefit. A few extra weeks to recover and heal gives them a chance to come back in July healthier than they have been for a while. In fact you can probably make the case that everyone really benefits from the extra time off. But on the other side of things if we are looking at longer term delays (say into 2021) then I think this starts to work against a lot of guys. Particularly veterans who were probably looking at their last year or so in sumo due to their age might be looking at just one more basho rather than 6. Sure they get to hang out in the salaried ranks in the meantime, but for people like Hakuho who are aiming for 50 yusho, or Kotoshogiku who is moving his way up the total wins list, this takes away some opportunity for them. Or guys like Takakeisho or Hokutofuji who are coming off poor showings and will have to carry that negative momentum even longer. Health and safety definitely need to be the foremost concern, but it’s interesting to think of all the indirect impacts the time off has.

Thanks, I missed this during my search. Interesting stuff, it’s an easy to overlook part of the basho but good to know some of the background so I can appreciate it more.

Thank you, this was great information. Doing a little extra reading I was surprised to see that Kasugaryu has been hanging around sandanmae for quite a few years and has been in sumo since 2001!

Every day after the final match there is a closing ceremony in which a rikishi using a bow performs a ritual in the dohyo. The yumitori-shiki. Its something that I admit I never paid too much attention to, but usually would catch part of while watching the days bouts recap. One thing I have noticed is that it appears that there was a recent change in who performs the ceremony. For quite some time (several years?)it appeared the same rikishi would do this so I always assumed it was done by someone as their primary sumo job. But after reading an article and an older post (links below) it seems that this is a rotating job. What struck me as odd is that it seems the person who normally does this is from makushita. Odd because given that I thought we would see more turnover in the position. Does anyone know the name of the person who did the ceremony prior the current person? https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2019/03/20/sumo/bow-twirling-ceremony/#.Xo0QfhZq2Ec

There is a fine line in all of this between overreacting and under reacting, and in the end we will probably all agree that no one got it right. If governments shut down the economy and people and businesses go bankrupt people will wonder if it really helped or if the financial pain was all worth it. If they do too little then we question why more sacrifices couldn’t have been made. NSK is in the same boat. Cancel the tournaments and play it safe and they lose income while still carrying a ton of expenses and risk going out of existence. Carry on and they risk PR disaster which they may also struggle to recover from. The March tourney was their effort to split the difference and I’d say it probably worked out as well as it could have. But who knows how lucky they will be going forward. I haven’t followed the Tokyo coronavirus news closely but from what I do hear it sounds like the government will shut down any chance of a May basho in the coming days or weeks. And since the efforts are to flatten the curve, which reduces the peak by expanding the time, I don’t see how this resolves in time for a July or possibly even a September tournament. At this point in time I am unsure we are any sumo in 2020 as it’ll be a slow return to normal without a mass produced vaccine. Of course I hope I am wrong and we all laugh about my 1-basho-only-in-2020 prediction as that’s a long time to go without sumo.

Thanks for posting this, it was a good read. Even as baseball loses popularity in the US it’s interesting to see the culture Japan has built around it. Football (American) and basketball have really pulled fans away over the years and I wonder if we’ll see soccer and other faster paced sports do the same in Japan.

Kotonowaka will be fun to watch. Young and lots of potential to grow while he moves up the ranks. It’ll be interesting to see how high up he moves into the ranks before hitting a roadblock and slowing down. But even then he has lots of time to find his groove and make runs at the top ranks.

Excellent point. Sumo probably has a pretty steady ceiling of viewers and having more kids and younger people at home probably dilutes that from a percentage point. I admit I don’t know particularly how to read the tv ratings, but I’d be interested to see how absolute numbers for January and March compared. My instinct tells me percentage and ranking drop but we should still see total viewership increase with more people stuck at home. Having said that, since there was no scandal or major retirement since January it’s hard to see why ratings would drop materially other than people were focused on things other than sport in general.

My thoughts are similar, but maybe a bit more optimistic. He had his first real struggles this basho, but he still held his own for the most part. I can see him moving into sekiwake territory if everything goes right, and maybe even hanging out there for a consecutive basho or two, but it’s hard to see an Ozeki run and much more logical to see him in the mid ranks while occasionally having a hot streak. My biggest concern with Enho is injury though. The bigger guys can tape themselves up and rely on their strength and size without being at too much of a disadvantage. For Enho speed and surprise are key to his wins. Even a slight muscle injury to his legs could slow him down enough that he wouldn’t be able to match larger and stronger opponents. But he is a man of surprise and who knows what we’ll see from him over the next 3 months or 3 years. That’s one of the things I love about sumo and what makes for great discussions and debate.

Interestingly none of us got the result for Takakeisho right.

Thanks Athenayama! This is super helpful too! I hope the May basho isn’t canceled as there are a lot of games I am looking forward to now.

Outside of his rank changing and the psychological burden of that, his opponents won’t change for the most part. And he clearly had shown that he can more than hold his own at this level and have double digit win totals. While I won’t crown him the next Yokozuna just yet, he is young and consistent enough to hang around Ozeki world for a while.

Thanks all for the links, they are super helpful. The SB links in particular are essentially what I was hoping existed. It doesn’t look like they cover all the games here, but I see a few in there that I was hoping to give a try in May. If anyone wants to advertise any of the games not covered in SB or wants to expand on any of the ones listed in the pinned post (the post just has entry dates and is light on details) I’d love to hear more.

Apologies if this is already a topic somewhere but I didn’t see any recent posts. I’ve only been active here since February but the sumo games were really fun in the lead up to and during the Haru basho. The one area of difficulty was navigating which games were active, how to join, deadlines, and which required daily activity vs. which you set up once and were done. Rather than sort through each game thread in the forum individually I thought it might be nice to have a central area where each game could be advertised with the highlights of what it requires to participate. Perhaps we can use this thread to post information about each game and how to join in for those of us who are interested but newer to the forum. Or if this type of resource already exists please point me towards it and let this thread slowly slide away from everyone’s attention.

Thanks for asking this, I’ve been wondering the same this since I joined back in February. +1 post closer to Sandanme!

I’ll admit that I haven’t always followed post basho news that closely, especially regards to timing, but when do most retirements get announced? Is what we have now all we should expect or should we expect another wave closer to the May tournament?

Thanks for the game, can’t wait for May to get here to try again!

Overall a pretty good basho and with two Yokozuna battling for the yusho on day 15 a pretty traditional ending. Takakeisho just seemed off. A big step down from January not just in his record but in his performance too. He wasn’t pushing as hard and let his opponents get inside too fast. I know he’s one dimensional, but he is so strong in that dimension that he’s still usually one of the best out there. Maybe he aggravated his injury late in the last basho (when he lost to Tokushoryu?) or in practice but a very noticeable change. Hope he bounces back fast for May! Same hope for Hokutofuji who also struggled after a very nice performance in January. It’ll be nice if he can come back with a double digit win record next time around.

Thanks for running the game! Not the best of results from me, but I’ll give it a better go in May.

Thanks for running this and congrats to Flohru! Can’t wait to do it again in May.

Is postponement a real option? I thought I had read previously that if the games didn’t go as scheduled they’d just be canceled as a delay wouldn’t be feasible due to other scheduling conflicts.

Agreed, a surprising result given neither got above one win in January. But it’s pretty cool to have a two Yokozuna winner-take-all final bout of the basho.

Right you both are. I posted that assuming they had announced Day 14 per the normal schedule. After I posted that I realized that was not the case. So now I too am surprised!

It probably made a lot more sense when it looked like Aoiyama would be 12-1 and everyone else would be 11-2 at best. One of the biggest complaints I remember from January was that Tokushoryu didn’t face anyone of a high caliber. Making Aoiyama beat Hakuho and (possibly) Kakuryu would take away the argument he was given an easy path to the yusho.