There are a couple more news-worthy items which have come up that I must share with you all, both related to heya. First up, Kakuryu has secured a kabu and will branch out with his own, independent stable: Otowayama. He takes Tokotsuru, the top-ranked Tokoyama (hairdresser) along with a couple of deshi, Hagane and his new recruit. Hagane is the only banzuke-ranked wrestler currently listed on the heya profile. This is fantastic news as the search has been a running drama for a few years with the 5-year shot clock running down.
Secondly, former Homasho (Tatsutagawa-oyakata) has officially been named acting stablemaster at Shikoroyama-beya, following the passing of Terao. Both he and Kakuryu…oops, Otowayama… will be gearing up in earnest for Hatsubasho once the New Year holidays calm down.
These machinations are often difficult for me to track in my head, so I am in the process of building a visualization based on the Kabu history pages at the SumoDB. There are a bunch of ways to look at these and I’m starting off with several different Gantt-style charts to look at the changes through time.
This first one that I would like to share is a list of all kabu, with color indicating whether the kabu holder is the stable master or a coach within another heya. What becomes apparent is that several names have long histories of being independent (Izutsu, Nishonoseki, Sadogatake) while others do not, like Otowayama and Ikazuchi. Homasho’s Tatsutagawa kabu has had a bit of a history as an independent heya but not as storied as Isegahama, obviously.
One thing that I would like to do is to tie the heya to exactly how storied or successful they were (have been). I’m trying to work out a defensible metric that I can use to gage such success through time. Maybe with the number of sanyaku wrestlers or top division wrestlers? It’s a tough call. Would you say that Oitekaze tops Isegahama as the most dominant heya, currently? Another tab on the visual already shows the holder by rank, as pictured on the left. Yokozuna are yellow, with lower ranking wrestlers darker shades of green. It’s interesting to see that according to the SumoDB data, gyoji had owned some of the kabu in the past.
I’ve got a draft version of another visualization that tracks the kabu by holder so that we can see how often some of these swap hands. Kobo, one of Hakuho’s former stablemates at Miyagino-beya, traded five different kabu during the ten years he remained a coach. Sanoyama is another kabu which seems to trade hands frequently, being held by Konishiki, Chiyotaikai, and recently Satoyama. However, with that visualization, there are so many holders and so few colors that it looks a bit crazy. Once I figure out a clean way to pair that down, it will be more helpful.
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Upcoming Otowayama rookie Shirasaka will be the stable’s third rikishi. Number two is Takeuchi.
https://sumodb.sumogames.de/Rikishi.aspx?r=12821
Ah, he’s banzuke-gai. Thank you! I wanted to make sure I wasn’t getting confused.
“…gage such success through time…”
This is difficult. I can imagine a few scenarios:
A healthy heya has wrestlers present in he lowest divisions through the top divisions and a consistent/continual flow up the ranks.
A building heya has wrestlers moving through the lower ranks but not (yet) in the salaried ranks.
A dying heya has wresters in the salaried ranks but nothing happening in the lower divisions.
Success means moving wrestlers through the ranks. The goal is to have a presence in the salaried ranks via a continuous feed. Perhaps there are bonus points for having wrestlers in the top division or possibly sanyaku, but I would say that having those top dogs alone is not enough to denote success or health of the heya. Maybe there are also bonus point for heyas associated with yushos, but not sure.
So in the end, I wonder how much of what happens in the top division defines overall success of the heya vs continually feeding the ranks.
It’s an interesting conversation, that’s for sure.
The other aspect of having rikishi in the top division is it helps with recruitment for the heya. It shows that the heya can be “successful” in that regard which potentially makes increasing the size of the heya easier. Recruitment is also multi-layered and murky because relationships between heya and schools/universities are also important. It’s definitely complicated.
I was surprised to learn that Kakuryu got hold of that Kabu. Because when i learned that news, i went on wikipedia to see that Kabu and perhaps who it belonged to before that and….i was surprise to see that this kabu name wasn’t even listed in the kabu list. (Which i know wasn’t possible since beside yokozuna special privilege, they don’t create any new kabu.)
I was totaly confused. Until i went on SumoDB and discovered that this kabu indeed existed, but was left vacant since the start of 2023. (Oh! Wikipedia ! How could you let me down !)
I was even more surprised and intrigued after that as to why this kabu was left vacant since the beginning of 2023 ? Who it belonged to before ? If it was vacant, why didn’t Kakuryu took it sooner and did it just now ?
I though all the kabu right now were pretty much all took, beside Terao Kabu who was just recently made vacant due to his sad departure. (And who Homasho seem to have took right now while vacanting his old one.)
Yikes, the last person to update that elder list on Wikipedia got more wrong than they got right.
I know there’s a delay to get data onto the SumoDB or the Kyokai website but Wikipedia is definitely behind quite a bit. I would think Japanese Wikipedia would be updated more reliably for sumo-related content.