Right after the Nagoya basho, I took a preliminary look at how the July results are likely to reshuffle the rankings chart for September. Now, it’s time for my full banzuke prediction. Here’s the guess; scroll down to read my analysis.
San’yaku
There is little suspense in the named ranks. Terunofuji will make it 3 straight years as the sole East Yokozuna. East Ozeki Kotozakura (10-5) and West Ozeki Hoshoryu (9-4-2) both posted winning records, the former got one more win, and so they will maintain their ranks for Aki. All five incumbents at Sekiwake and Komusubi finished with winning records, and they will be joined by demoted Ozeki Takakeisho, so we’ll have four Sekiwake and two Komusubi. The only question is whether S1e Abi (8-7) and S1w Onosato and/or K1e Daieisho (8-7) and K1w Hiradoumi (10-5) will switch sides based on the West-side rikishi getting more wins. In recent years, such switches have required a greater disparity in performance than seen here, so I’ve opted to keep everyone in place.
M1-M12
This part of the banzuke should be fairly predictable. Based on the usual rank-record math and precedence of East over West, there is a clear rank order, with only a handful of ties that I’ve opted to break as follows:
- Oho vs. Mitakeumi: Oho gets M2w so 7-8 Mitakeumi can receive a minimal demotion.
- Wakamotoharu vs. Shodai: WMH gets M3w by virtue of his higher rank and tough schedule.
- Ura vs. Churanoumi: same as above.
- Endo vs. Midorifuji: similar ranks and fight cards, so 10-win Endo gets M8e over 8-win Midorifuji.
- Ichiyamamoto vs. Oshoma: more wins for Ichiyamamoto, and Oshoma receives a minimal demotion.
- Roga vs. Sadanoumi: more wins for Roga, and Sadanoumi still gets a lenient demotion.
- Bushozan vs. Kinbozan: same as above.
M13-M17
I have little confidence in the order here, and there is even some uncertainty in who’ll be ranked here as opposed to in Juryo. We have only two clear promotions in J1w Onokatsu (9-6) and Juryo champion J8e Shirokuma (12-3), but six incumbents deserve a trip to the second division. Injury victim M12e Asanoyama (3-2-10) and M17e Nishikifuji (6-9) will be demoted for certain. Next in line is M15e Chiyoshoma (5-5-5). I’ve swapped him with J3e Kitanowaka, whose 8-7 record doesn’t really warrant promotion, so the banzuke committee could conceivably opt to save the incumbent. Then, we come to another injury victim, M5e Onosho (0-4-11). All seven winless M5 rikishi this century ended up in Juryo, but who is there to bring up? It would have to be either J10e Shishi (11-4) or J6w Tamashoho (9-6), each of whom would have needed two more wins for a proper promotion claim. I think Onosho will be fortunate enough to survive, though it wouldn’t be a shock to see him in Juryo. As for the other two men facing potential demotion, the lack of promotion candidates should keep M13w Takarafuji (5-10) and M3e Takayasu (0-2-13) safely in the top division. I’ve cobbled together the order above based on a combination of historical research and vibes, but given that three rikishi are coming up from Juryo, the incumbents have terrible records, and four of the nine don’t even deserve to be in the top division based on July, pretty much anything could happen here.
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FWIW, I ended up re-ranking both S and K by record – I don’t know anymore what their mindset on this is supposed to be. Other than that we’re very similar down to M13, just WMH/Shodai and Ura/Churanoumi flipped. At the bottom I have Takayasu three spots lower, and Kitanowaka/Onosho the other way around (I very nearly changed that at the last minute, but ended up leaving my draft as is).
Would be funny if they promoted Takanosho to komusubi.
I wanted to see whether they flip S/K this time before updating my prior on their approach. Moving Takayasu up (largely based on Kyushu 2016) and flipping Kitanowaka/Onosho (thinking Onosho is even luckier to stay than Kitanowaka is to go up) were last-minute changes for me; we’ll see if I regret them.
I really don’t want my GTB rank to get messed up for a year again by having the wrong san’yaku count…
Wow ! This crystal banzuke is sure to be remembered.
I remember some time ago, there was one crystal banzuke that you were trying to do Iksumo that was a complet nightmare of a log jam. There was just too much promotion at the bottom of the list and there was too much of a clogging at the top.
Now that banzuke here feel totally the opposite of a log jam. Everyone deserve to get the “boot”, but there is no one to take their place. XD Ha ha ha ha ha !!!!
Re: Daiesho/Hiradoumi, I noticed in my research that nobody at Komusubi has ever had more wins than a Komusubi ahead of them and not been ranked ahead on the following banzuke, at least not in the last 30 years, which is as far as I checked. Of course, most cases didn’t involve both being stuck at Komusubi after. But still, there’s no history of Komusubi not being reordered.
Right, but the most recent case of them being reordered is 1999, when they were also routinely reordering seikwake. Anyway, this banzuke will for sure inform how they’re currently thinking about this, and whether S and K are treated the same or not.
I’m essentially hoping/betting that somebody on the committee advanced a credible argument that Hiradoumi should be in front of Daieisho, and then somebody else said, “But now we can’t leave Onosato behind Abi, can we?” ;) But even if my GTB guess is right, I’m not entirely hopeful that it could be taken as general confirmation that they’re reordering S/K again. I certainly do hope, as usual, that the committee will finally return to sanity and reordering with any win difference becomes the norm again.
I‘d love to see Hiradoumi making a leap, but isn‘t it the main rule (or shouldn‘t it be), that you won’t be demoted when you achieved kachikoshi? Please explain, because some banzuke things are still mysterious to me :)
I think that’s one of my big questions, too.
Are we all aware that the Ozeki ranks are ALWAYS rearranged according to the previous basho’s results? At least in that way, demotions after winning records are the norm. Sekiwake and Komusubi ranks have likewise been rearranged in the past to match the most recent results, but for many years now, that hasn’t been happening. And now there are signs that the practice is being resumed. This banzuke should be telling.
Yeah, but whether O1 or O3, one is still Ozeki and neither being promoted or demoted. Also, a single make-koshi does not lead to a change in that Ozeki rank. Shuffling, therefore, is straightforward. Shuffling at Komusubi or Sekiwake is not as straightforward. With shuffling, someone can go 9-6 at K1 and have their future Sekiwake promotion chances injured by someone who goes 10-5. There can be real consequences which seem unjust.
Why is it unjust that the guy who went 9-6 at komusubi should have a lower chance of a future promotion to sekiwake than the guy who went 10-5 at komusubi? That’s exactly why the not-reordering is so maddening. 9-6 guy didn’t have his chances “injured”, he got outclassed fair and square by another rikishi who holds functionally the same rank, and the next banzuke needs to reflect that. Do you seriously feel that if they leave Daieisho in front of Hiradoumi here, both go 9-6 next time and there’s one open sekiwake slot for the Kyushu banzuke, it’s just peachy if 8+9 wins Daieisho gets it rather than 10+9 wins Hiradoumi? If there was an open sekiwake slot now, absolutely everybody would say that Hiradoumi needs to get it, not Daieisho.
Not necessarily outclassed. Luck can certainly play a factor in these hypothetical, quiver situations. Fusen happen. Stablemates of Terunofuji have an absolute advantage because that’s one important bout they don’t get. Which is replaced with an M5 or something.
To be honest, I think it’s probably just most fair to have it determined case-by-case as they seem to be doing. Maybe they have no outright criteria, and just want to play it fair. It will be interesting to see what happens this go ’round.
Also, many people who don’t think about banzuke mechanics too much fall into the trap of believing in a rote “8-7 records should not be demoted / should not be passed by other records”. No. Above-average records should not be demoted. In the limited context of where they’re ranked, i.e. in lower sanyaku, the 8-7’s by Abi, Kirishima and Daieisho were not above average, therefore there should be no expectation that their spots deserve to be locked in.
But should Atamifuji always have a bit of an inside line since there’s an M5 and no Y on his schedule?
Yes, he should. He’s not the one who made the match-up rules, and the banzuke-making is not the place to somehow “correct” for developments that are a – for the rikishi – unavoidable result of the tournament rule set. This also goes for the endless debates about whether wins by fusensho deserve to be counted as full wins for the banzuke. Of course they do. Either it’s accepted that all rikishi win-loss records are equally valid if they were achieved under the same rules, or the door is opened to the worst kinds of subjectivity.
I would disagree and just assert that the “outclassed” competitor may not be as simple as tallying Wins vs Losses, especially with promotion to Sekiwake so important. Since it’s dependent on open slots, maybe it just affords them to factor in other criteria. A 9-6 with a win over a Yokozuna and Ozeki might even get special prizes not afforded to the guy with a 10-5 at the same rank. Maybe they even value consistency of someone like Daieisho or Goeido being able to put together a solid string of successful tournaments at such a high rank over… let’s say… a one-off great tournament from a new guy. Maybe they like the flexibility of deciding on a case-by-case basis for those cases when it’s not outright and obvious. Anyway, I am sure the guys on the committee have felt the burns and blessings of banzuke luck for themselves that they’re trying to do what would be most fair.
I’m honestly not sure what your point is. When sekiwake slots are open, they never go against what the wins and losses say in deciding who should be promoted into them. That’s exactly why it makes no sense to do things differently without open slots. That aside, so what if a 9-6 guy defeated a yokozuna and a 10-5 guy didn’t? By necessity that means that the 9-6 guy was lacking in other match-ups. Would you support the yusho going to a rikishi that went 12-3 but “looked better” than another that went 13-2? If not, why should X cherry-picked matches carry more weight than the other 15 minus X when it comes to the banzuke creation, which is based on the exact same cumulative performance results?
Sansho are completely irrelevant, they’re meant to reward different things than the banzuke placement does. (I’m having a feeling of déjà vu in pointing that out.)
Anyway, your core misunderstanding IMHO is that the banzuke is simply not a skill ranking. It’s a performance ranking, primarily so for all ranks and purely so for the ranks up to sekiwake. Obviously there’s a certain degree of discretion and leeway built in, especially when comparing performances achieved against significantly different opposition, but fundamentally it’s been all about the wins and losses for the last nearly 150 years. It’s not the banzuke committee’s job to try to put each rikishi where they subjectively think his underlying skill level “deserves” to see him ranked. If it was, we’d currently be pondering whether Takayasu is going to be M5 or M6 for Aki, not where he’s going to end up in the double-digit ranks, and Onosato would probably be ozeki already, if not yokozuna.
If a rikishi is underranked, it’s up to him to demonstrate that in the next tournament. If he’s overranked, it’s up to those around him to demonstrate it as his opponents. Anyone that supports even an implied notion that the banzuke committee should try to guess the future and actively prevent rikishi from going to ranks where they supposedly don’t belong wants to see a very different, much less modern and much more arbitrary sport.
I like to think of the banzuke as a Markov process, with no memory past the just-completed tournament (obviously excluding Ozeki promotions/demotions and Yokozuna promotions) and no looking ahead. Take the rikishi names off the records as well, and simply rearrange everyone based on their prior ranks and records. I think we all believe that other considerations creep in to the process, but they usually play out on the margins if at all, and it’s very hard to know/guess what they might be and when they come into play, so it’s simpler to ignore them.
I like that way of thinking for all ranks except for those who are looking at Ozeki and Yokozuna promotion. In those cases, there is a clear need for exceptional performance at a high rank across multiple tournaments. So that criteria would bleed down to Sekiwake, Komusubi, and possibly top Maegashira. But otherwise, I would completely agree.
Sorry for the delay, been a busy week.
“so what if a 9-6 guy defeated a yokozuna and a 10-5 guy didn’t? By necessity that means that the 9-6 guy was lacking in other match-ups.”
I feel that structurally, this is why a guy like Atamifuji would always have the inside line on promotion over someone who is not in Isegahama. I do like how you bring up the banzuke as a performance-based ranking rather than a skill-based ranking. That’s very true and I really like that way of looking at it. It’s a “results” based system. But there are some of these structural biases in the scheduling and bouts which would influence results, including fusen and the excepted match-ups among stablemates. You’ve not yet addressed the fact that Atamifuji faces a different, easier schedule than if, say, Kinbozan had the exact same rank. And I do not see how sansho are irrelevant since they’re performance-based prizes for exceptional performances. If the rankings are thus based on performance, it stands to reason that sansho would fit as a bullet-point on the resume.
The same heya thing used to be much more extreme in the Futagoyama days, and sumo doesn’t really have a mechanism to address this. (This is a random banzuke from that era; I’m sure someone who was following sumo back then can dig up a more extreme one: https://sumodb.sumogames.de/Banzuke.aspx?b=199501&heya=-1&shusshin=-1&h=on )
Yeah, Markov process is a good way to think about. Sometimes there are head-scratches that make one think the algorithm is a bit broken, but I agree that the exceptions are, well, the exceptions.
I was interested in the comment by Asashosakari regarding it being about above-average records. So, that’s what determines swaps within named ranks occur, is it? For example, if O2 gets a better record than O1, and K2 gets a better record than K1, and O2-K2 records are the same, as are O1-K1 records, then its possible (depending on the actual numbers) that K would swap ranks but O wouldn’t?
If true, though, this doesn’t seem to be the case beyond swaps within named ranks. For example, I don’t recall cases where the lowest-ranked sekiwake goes 8-7 and gets demoted to komusubi because someone beneath had a sekiwake-warranting record. Instead, they just open another sekiwake slot. Or am I totally out to lunch on this?
Wait, thinking about this more – this cannot be the case. Otherwise, a M17 with a 4-11 record would be considered above-average. But even a 7-8 record there is normally enough for a demotion..
In this Andy vs Asashosakari debate I tend to take sides with Andy. Sekiwake and Komusubi are named ranks but they have no privileges like the Ozeki and of course there’s no ceremony when a rikishi reaches the lower Sanyaku. They are simply the true top of the Maegashira and the same rules for promotions and demotions should be applied. Therefore a kachikoshi imo has to mean no demotion. Hiradoumi just has no banzuke luck this time. (Funnily enough in Natsu Daieisho had two wins more than Hiradoumi, which means they both reached 19 wins over the last two basho…)
Would the bout between the two (that Daieisho won) play a part in the decision?
By my count, we have 5 former Ozeki now fighting in the top division below the rank of Ozeki (Takayasu, Shodai, Mitakeumi, Takakeisho, Kirishima). Is that a record?
Aren’t you missing Asanoyama? And if the injury had happened a bit later, this could have been missing Wakatakakage, too!
Oh, I’m living in the past as usual – of course, he will be in Juryo – doh!
I did the exact same thing. My eyes skipped over the “in the top division” part.
I left all the 7-8 rikishi except Atamifuji in place, because Tobizaru had to get the M1w slot. Swapping the S1’s and K’s seemed like the right call, better records than the guys on the east side deserve the swap.
I didn’t go real generous with promotions nor heavy on demotions, and had tough calls on where to put the guys who should have boarded the Juryo barge but won’t due to not enough worthy swaps. I may have placed the Juryo promotions up too high but again that was because of the tough calls on the others.
I filled out the Juryo and Makushita joi guesses as well, and will be curious to see how that pans out.