This past week, Terunofuji tweeted a picture of Shunba from this past basho.
Along with this article on the Tsukebito system that featured Shunba’s mentoring of Terunofuji, I had also written about the debut of two college champions in Makuushita. However, I neglected to provide updates during the tournament on their performance. It’s difficult to follow these guys because rarely are videos taken or shared of their bouts.
Fortunately for us, Shunba has his own social media presence, on Twitter as @shunba_sekito, and here’s his blog. His blog is great. It’s often hard to find video of lower-ranked rikishi but in his latest post he provides links to Youtube videos of his bouts from the last tournament. Please visit his site and click on the links over there. Unfortunately, he finished 1-6 after his fantastic 6-1 Makushita debut. So he will slide back down the banzuke, likely around Makushita 45 or so.
Mitoryu’s (Torbold Baasansuren) first bout was available on SumoDB but they didn’t have videos of Yago’s bouts. Mitoryu finished makekoshi, 3-4, but Yago did well at 5-2 and will rise toward the top of makushita. We may see him in Juryo in September or November if he continues to do well. I will try to do a better job of keeping up with makushita.
As for a cryptic test tweet last week and a follow up tweet about Chanko that many seemed to enjoy, I’m working on a secret project (I’ve dubbed it Project X). I’m very excited about it and hope to provide details on it by the end of June.
We already know all about it and we’re waiting for Taichi brand freeze-dried Chanko Nabe (“The Chanko of Champions”, just add water!) to appear in the local 7-11.
Definitely! Anything beats the Top Ramen that we’ve been subjected to!
BTW, thank you for pointing out Terunofuji’s feed – I never would have pictured him as a beatboxer! And the tiny little girls that next to normal people look like normal people. :)
The Natsu basho bouts for makushita rikishi are now linked in the DB.
That is awesome news. Thank you for letting me know. Do you know the people behind that site?
The people doing the videos or the people running the database? The videos are just what’s publicly available on Youtube (in this case One And Only’s excellent self-filmed coverage), linked to the results in the database by volunteers – this time I pitched in a few days ago, normally others are already doing it during the tournament. Other than that I’m not involved in running the DB. I do have contact to Doitsuyama who is the mastermind behind it, but then so do lots of people as he’s a fan himself, of course.
(I have a bit of a feeling I might’ve misunderstood the thrust of your question though…)
You definitely got the gist and answered my question. I didn’t realize the content was updated by volunteers. That’s pretty awesome. I assumed it wasn’t officially connected to the Sumo Kyokai but since the data is so comprehensive and goes back so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was actually connected to the Kyokai in some way. Being fan run and updated by volunteers actually blows my mind. I mean life has a way of getting between me and my updates. There must be an army of volunteers — of which I will hope to join if we ever move back to Japan.
I would hope the Sumo Kyokai would have a similar database of official information but with more data than what’s currently available on their site. For instance, I really want to get my hands on kenshokin data. That would be fascinating. My dream addition to the SumoDB would be gifs of the banners and how many each bout had.
There’s a small bunch of us that dig up new information in the normal course of events, but the actual running and updating of the database is pretty much just Doitsuyama’s sterling work, outside of the video links and the kabu section. Most of the contemporary data is automatically grabbed from the Kyokai’s website; anything else would be far too labour-intensive. As for the old stuff, it’s very much a “standing on the shoulders of giants” thing…the DB exists in public form since 2007, but I believe Doitsuyama was collecting data for it since at least the early 2000’s. Almost all of it originally comes from old sumo books and magazines, some of it put into electronic form for the first time by him, but a lot of it even earlier by other people – many of those older data sites no longer exist now. The “About” page on the DB has a little background information.
I do think the Kyokai collects detailed kensho data nowadays, but I was surprised to find out that it really hasn’t been a priority for them – a few years ago a news report implied that the Kyokai didn’t even track the daily totals before 1994 or so, let alone the numbers on individual bouts. Nikkansports publishes unofficial counts for the top 10 winners of a basho, and there are fan efforts underway to expand on that, but it’s naturally limited by the availability (or not) of useful video coverage by NHK.
(Actually, there’s a lot of possible data that has just been lost. There are a number of lower-division rikishi from before the 1980s whose shikona readings in the DB are just guesses because no publicly available source had him – John Gunning inquired directly with the Kyokai, and they don’t know either! Apparently the shikona of lower rankers were only tracked in kanji form for the longest time. And for before 1934, even the win-loss records for makushita and below simply don’t exist anymore.)
Doitsuyama deserves a pint next time I’m in Japan (or if he’s in DC). It’s an awesome effort and one that I hope is encouraged, appreciated and facilitated by the kyokai.
By the way, no need to be based in Japan in order to contribute to the DB. Some of the original data sets came from Japanese sources, of course, but other than John Gunning I don’t believe any of the people who’ve made significant contributions since the DB went public were based there. (Okay, I guess One And Only kinda counts as a contributor, but he’s not shooting his videos for the purposes of the DB, we just gratefully piggyback on his efforts.)
It will be very interesting to see how the college Yokozuna progress.
In other news, just ten days until the banzuke!