Massive Crowd Welcomes New Yokozuna

Tokyo – In the overnight hours US / EU time, Kisenosato performed his first public dohyo-iri on the grounds of the Meiji shrine, in front of sumo officials and a crowd estimated to be over 20,000. It is customary for a new Yokozuna to perform this ceremony two days after his elevation to sumo’s highest rank. His attendants were (as expected), Takayasu as sword bearer and Shohozan as dew sweeper.

As there has only been two days to prepare, Kisenosato’s dohyo-iri was a bit rough, and lacked many of the polished, fluid qualities seen in, for example, Hakuho’s dohyo-iri. For this debut dohyo-iri, Kisenosato and his retainers do not yet have their own sword, or their matching Keshō-mawashi (long aprons), so the shin-yokozuna customarily borrows them from a predecessor. In this case it was the great Wakanohana I.