🌐 Location: Nagano
Kisenosato reprimands youngsters, disciplines Asanoyama
This story actually starts yesterday, at Ichinomiya. Kisenosato came to the stadium in the morning with the intention of engaging Asanoyama in some practice, and was dismayed to find only six sekitori around the dohyo – all of them veterans. None of the young talents (Onosho, Takakeisho, Asanoyama etc.) were to be seen.
The Yokozuna liked this not at all, and made his opinions clear to the press: “Keiko is part of their job. When I was young, I never missed keiko. If you want to become strong, you have to be diligent. And there are spectators present who came today especially to see Asanoyama, the freshman who won ten bouts in the Aki Basho. The Yokozuna and Ozeki are present, but where are the young sekitori?”
The message apparently got through and today at Nagano the mean age around the dohyo dropped significantly. But Kisenosato didn’t let it go at that.
The Yokozuna summoned Asanoyama to a session of disciplinary butsukari, which extended to five minutes of tough TLC, apparently accompanied by some talking-to. “The words were rough, too”, said Kisenosato. “Do I have expectations of him? Yes, though saying this to someone who doesn’t give a hoot is worthless.”
Mitakeumi welcomed as a hero on his home turf
Today was Mitakeumi’s day. He hails from Nagano prefecture, and the Jungyo today comes two years after the previous visit. The local police honored him (and Onosho, I have no idea why, as he comes from Aomori) as “police chief for a day”, which mainly consisted of Mitakeumi keeping his face straight, warning the elderly not to fall victim to phone solicitations.
Sumo-wise, almost 7000 people gathered in the stadium to see the local hero, and during the customary handshake part of the day, a long line formed waiting for Mitakeumi to shake their hand. On the dohyo, the sekiwake took some low-rankers for butsukari, and put some extra effort into the wanpaku-keiko goofiness. He even got his oicho-mage done in front of the spectators:
He finished up with a torikumi vs. Goeido, ending with a tsuridashi in favor of the local celebrity, to the delight of the spectators. View it all here:
(This is taken from NHK)
“I’m glad I could come back here as sanyaku”, said the sekiwake.
Torikumi of the day
Lots of torikumi today! Thank you, sumo lovers of Nagano!
For Taka-twin lovers, let’s start with Takayoshitoshi vs. Terao:
貴公俊vs寺尾 貴公俊は同じ方向気にしてた🤔でもニコニコしてた😆 #長野場所 pic.twitter.com/3GHSCrdJsc
— わ～ちゃん@長野、津場所 (@wakya33) October 13, 2017
And complete that with Takagenji vs. Yago.
矢後vs貴源治 #長野場所 pic.twitter.com/8Wvh0XhgjY
— わ～ちゃん@長野、津場所 (@wakya33) October 13, 2017
Uch, Yago should not have tried that grip change. Very clumsy.
Edit: The YouTube videos were removed by their owner, so I can only describe the Kotoyuki vs. Asanoyama bout: Kotoyuki hoots, knocks the air out of Asanoyama twice, then when Asanoyama goes low and tries to headbutt his chest, he sidesteps. Asanoyama recovers and turns around, but Kotoyuki adds a rapid tsuppari and sends Asanoyama out by oshidashi.
The Takarafuji-Chiyoshoma starts with Chiyoshoma gaining a slight advantage. Takarafuji backs down, but gets a good grip, picks up Chiyoshoma and throws him off the dohyo and onto poor Nishikigi. This is followed by a bout between Ishiura and Chiyonokuni, in which Ishiura does the most flagrant Henka in the world, and then you get this:
石浦vs千代の国 石浦飛んだら千代の国も飛んだ🤣 #長野場所 pic.twitter.com/8yfCKFIQby
— わ～ちゃん@津場所 (@wakya33) October 13, 2017
Chiyonokuni flies out and… falls on Nishikigi on the sidelines. End of edit.
Poor, poor Nishikigi! And poor granny behind Nishikigi! Well, now we know why he puts his glasses somewhere safe and far away from the dohyo every time. :-)
Actually, he didn’t suffer too much from that. In fact, it seems that he did two Torikumi today and won both (first one not really well filmed):
錦木長野巡業で2番とる😀 其の一 #長野場所 #大栄翔 pic.twitter.com/Esveu57P5N
— わ～ちゃん@長野、津場所 (@wakya33) October 13, 2017
The one vs. Ichinojo (right after the granny incident):
錦木長野巡業で荒鷲の代わりに逸ノ城と相撲をとる 錦木その2 #長野場所 pic.twitter.com/kXzLzoQfqR
— わ～ちゃん@長野、津場所 (@wakya33) October 13, 2017
As far as I understand, he did this one while covering for Arawashi. No word on what happened to Arawashi, though.
If I get a video of the musubi-no-ichiban I’ll be sure to post it. The result was yori-kiri for Kakuryu (vs. Kisenosato, obviously).
Tomorrow Hakuho is back, so maybe there will be some variation in the musubi from now on!
どうでもいいやつ in this context probably best translates to “a guy who doesn’t care.” So your “someone who doesn’t give a hoot” was pretty spot on. Haha.
It does seem as though Kisenosato was praising Onosho and Takakeisho in the Sponichi article, rather than reprimanding them though.
Thanks. Yes, that sentence about them can mean “They came to cheer on”, as well as “They are gradually applying force”, and probably several things more, but the fact is that they, too, were AWOL yesterday. So I don’t think that they are the subject of that sentence at all… so I suspect that it’s literally something like “I came to apply force to them as well”, with the “ni” dropped, or something like that. Sigh.
I took Kisenosato to mean that those two are getting stronger. As in, if Asanoyama doesn’t do keiko, he’ll get left behind.
It could be, but then, if all three of them didn’t do keiko yesterday, and the two of them are getting stronger despite missing keiko occasionally, it’s a very poor example to give Asanoyama, isn’t it? Maybe I am expecting too much logic from a Yokozuna who believes his arm can heal magically. :-(
This made me laugh out loud at work and now my coworkers are looking at me funny!
Note: I edited the post after I found a second version of the same article in Sponichi with more context. Your translation makes perfect sense as it turns out that he said it when asked about the expected return of Hakuho, rather than in the context of Asanoyama’s ordeal.
This version from Sponichi is much better written. The earlier version just didn’t make sense in context.
Great job as always! You’re killing it with the daily coverage of the jungyo. Much better than the Japanese news sources themselves, actually!
Knocking it out of the park with this. Two things I’d like to see in Jungyo:
1) Jungyo stats (I wonder if the kyokai has these stats and can give it to the SumoDB)
2) More kenshokin in Jungyo!!! (It’s fantastic to see the sponsors during jungyo events like this.)
I don’t believe they are picking Jungyo stats. And if you have cases in which the same wrestler participates in two bouts in the same day, like Nishikigi did here, this would skew them anyway, wouldn’t it?
Results from jungyo bouts on the DB?
It would be interesting…like spring training in baseball or preseason stats in football…but Herouth’s point is well taken. It’s very different from honbasho.
I wouldn’t really consider jungyo as equivalent to pre-season/spring training games in the big American sports where, while perhaps not trying to win at all costs, they’re still handled as actual competitive affairs just constrained by the need to get everyone ready for the real season.
Rather, jungyo matches aren’t any more serious than, say, the Wednesday pro-am round before a PGA Tour tournament. I don’t know if there are official scorecards for those for the pro players, but even if there are, I doubt anyone’s treating that as useful performance information.
Some rikishi might be taking them a little more seriously than others, but ultimately there’s no particular meaning to these bouts beyond trying to deliver a good show and not getting injured in the process. Hometown rikishi win their bouts, matchups between rikishi A and rikishi B will frequently see A win one day and B the next (rinse-repeat), etc.. It’s an exhibition – if not entirely predetermined, then at least not treated anything like genuine competition.
I’ve been curious about this because some of the events get billed as a basho, like the Odaiba Basho, others seem to be like a scrimmage. I would agree that stats on scrimmage-like events don’t make sense but how legit are the “Basho” events. I think the Chiba event was a Basho.
There’s been a somewhat inflationary use of “basho” in naming jungyo events in recent years – http://www.sumo.or.jp/Jungyo/schedule/ has the listings for October and December, where you’ll find that 場所 appears in the majority of them. It’s more “event” than “tournament” in that context, although I’m guessing that “basho” gets used exactly because it makes things sound more like the real (honbasho) thing.
Occasionally jungyo events do use a bracket match format that plays down to a winner, rather than the usual standalone torikumi for the top division rikishi (I think promoters have to request this), similar to the one-day prize money event sponsored by Fuji TV or the recent Meiji shrine charity event that Kisenosato won. I don’t know if the rikishi are treating that format as a more competitive deal.
If you take a look at the results of the jungyo musubi, you’ll see that they looks very… ahem… regular. It was basically kise-kakuryu-kise-kakuryo-kise-kakuryu except perhaps one day… Then yesterday the musubi changed to Hakuho-Kise, Hakuho won, and today… hmmm… Kisenosato won…
Sure, I mean, Kisenosato beats Hakuho often, right?
(Yep, if he is actually Asashoryu wearing a Kisenosato body suit).
It wasn’t actually like that in the summer Jungyo (I clearly remember Haruma beating Hakuho two days in a row. But then it could actually be the beginning of Hakuho’s injury).