No, I’m not talking about the bout you’re thinking of. He lost that one. As we established, sumo is not strictly about “who touched first.” I’m talking about special prizes. I think Mitakeumi should have picked up a second special prize to go along with his Outstanding Performance prize. He should have got the Gino-sho, or Technique prize. He won using eight distinct kimarite, more than any other wrestler in the July tournament. Terunofuji, who was actually awarded the prize, used five, as did Terutsuyoshi (which included ashitori and an amiuchi).
As with so many things I do lately, I’ve included a visualization to help make my point. This visualization also got me thinking about a possible new feature. What if we weight kimarite based on rarity or flashiness? Izori, for example, would be multiplied by a factor substantially higher than the humdrum yorikiri/oshidashi. This way, we at Tachiai can give an alternative special prize, one based on data.
I’m going to flesh out the details in this week and by next weekend hope to have a methodology. So while Terutsuyoshi may have used only five kimarite, maybe with the bonus factors he’d edge Mitakeumi? I still think Mitakeumi’s throws, especially the uwatenage against Asanoyama, are quality.
By the way, it’s also interesting to check out the other names up here near the top. Tamawashi’s oshi/tsuki/kotenage style is rather versatile. Hakuho, obviously, knows how to win. How’s Ura up here, though, considering he doesn’t even get half the bouts? I’m really looking forward to seeing him compete every day, and even eligible for special prizes.
If you’re like me, the sumo stables (heya) are a rather daunting mystery. There are so many of them that even after all of these years, beyond a few famous ones, I still can’t tell my Futagoyama from my Nishikido. After all, there are 45 active stables and there have been significant changes in the past couple of years. There are also many former and a few active wrestlers, ready to spread their wings and set up their own new stables.
There are great resources online to help out. First, the Sumo Kyokai’s website has the Sumo Beya Guide with a list of the wrestlers and staff. In a pinch, it’s a great, current roster. Then, of course, the SumoDB has a ton of information on the stables of each wrestler and does a great job tracking the history of changes; wrestlers do move from one heya to another — usually because a stable closes and its wrestlers are absorbed by a second stable, or a new stable opens and rikishi follow their recruiter to his new home.
Excellent Heya Roster and Sumo Reference
Hat-tip to Bruce for this excellent reference book. It has a complete roster with mugshots of all the wrestlers at the time of printing, grouped with their heya. It also has the staff, including coaches, hair dressers, gyoji, and support staff…my go-to reference, especially when watching those lower division matches because it includes the all-important furigana to help me penetrate some of the more bewildering shikona.
To add to these resources, I put together a little dashboard that I hope you will find as helpful as I do. This helps me get even more of a sense of not only which wrestlers are in which stable but also where the stables draw their wrestlers from. I can also drill into the kimarite (or winning techniques) the rikishi prefer, as well as what they fall victim to.
Feel free to click around. You can select a heya from the radio buttons on the right on either tab and the banzuke will filter to only those wrestlers from your selected heya. On the first tab, you can also click on a shusshin to have the banzuke filter to the wrestlers from that shusshin and on the second tab, click on the individual wrestler’s name to filter the kimarite chart. The kimarite includes each wrestlers’ career record — not just Osaka.
Oitekaze: A Southern Stable
As an example, let’s take a look at Oitekaze-beya, home of Endo, Daieisho, and just about everyone else named Dai~~ and Tsurugisho. Curiously, Oitekaze oyakata seems to recruit exclusively from the southern half of Japan. Tatsunami-beya, on the other hand, picks guys from the far north, the far south, and around Kanto…skipping over much in between.
Daiei-oshi
On the second tab, you can see how well each wrestler did in Osaka in the top graph. In the bottom chart, you can discern his strengths and weaknesses. For Endo, we’ve got a clear preference for yotsu techniques while Daieisho prefers an oshi-battle, win or lose. You can get a sense that he will force the issue and not allow anyone near his belt while Endo is not quite as able to assert his preference.
I’m eager to hear what you discover about your favorite stables…or if it helps you find a stable to investigate further. I’ll update this with the current banzuke as we get closer to Nagoya Tokyo.
Unlike many Makuuchi mainstays, Takayasu did not take the express elevator from Jonokuchi to sekitori status. Some men have such physical prowess or talent that after starting from the bottom, they can make it to Juryo in under two years. Goeido climbed to Makushita 2 West in time for his sixth tournament, in January 2006, and joined the salaried ranks by November of that year. Others who had an established and successful college career, like Endo and Ichinojo, get a head start and begin their careers as high as mid-Makushita.
Takayasu’s Career, Visualized
Takayasu, on the other hand, started at the bottom and did not shoot straight up. The graph on the right side of the image above shows how Takayasu was grinding it out in Jonidan for a year and a half, spent another year in Sandanme, and then three in Makushita before earning his silk mawashi. How did he do it? What helped drive him those years, while guys like Aoiyama are in the Makushita joi within a year of their debut?
In July 2005, Takayasu broke out of Jonokuchi, ranked Jonidan 129w. Unlike Shunba, who worked on an oshi-style sumo that year, Takayasu chose a yotsu-style sumo. Neither of them were particularly dominant in their style, however. Shunba won as many bouts to oshidashi as he won, while Takayasu actually lost more to yorikiri than he won. However, of his 38 wins in that division, Takayasu employed 18 different kimarite while continuing to improve his yotsu skills through 2006 and into 2007. He was clearly testing out various throws and trips but was clearly developing his grappling acumen.
Something “Clicks”
In the fall of 2006, it seemed to finally click and he began to win more frequently with yotsu-techniques, especially yorikiri, but with hatakikomi, throws and trips sprinkled in. 2007 was a year of steady improvement in Sandanme with one tournament with a losing record. An interesting thing happened after that setback, though. He began to use oshi techniques and in November he went 5-2 with three wins by oshidashi.
This success brought him to the cusp of makushita but it would be another three years before his Juryo debut in November of 2010. In makushita he further honed his oshi-skills but really the most effective tool ended up being hatakikomi. However, it is very striking to see just how, aside from these old reliable kimarite, he also established a reliable throwing repertoire.
With that impressive bag of tricks, during the tumultuous Spring of 2011, Juryo was a breeze and by July Takayasu made his debut in Makuuchi. Eight years later, and the addition of the third pillar of tsuki- style sumo, Takayasu has become a complete package. If he can stay healthy, he has the skills to beat almost anyone on the dohyo. Will this finally be his basho?
If you want to play around with the Visualizer tool, I’ve finally added the career view on the right-hand side. I tried to make it as helpful as possible so almost all of the charts can act as filters. If you click on a slice of the pie, like for Juryo, the rest of the visualization filters to just Juryo. If you choose a particular tournament, or a few tournaments, you can see the kimarite for just that tournament. Have fun.
After these first few days of Hatsu 2019, it seemed like a lot of bouts were being decided as oshidashi, so I thought I’d take a look at how the tournament fits in with the narrative around the declining use of yorikiri/ yoritaoshi to win tournaments and the rising use of oshidashi/oshitaoshi.
I am very tempted to lump the Top 5 throws category in with yorikiri since throws seem, to me, an extension of “belt work”. Similarly, hatakikomi could be a “pusher/thruster” tactic? Anyway, some of the 72 others could also be lumped in with one or the other but decided to just take any kimarite of less than 1% and lump them all into “other”.
It’s clearly too early to say anything about whether 2019 will see this trend continue or anything, but it was very interesting to see just how much things have changed over the past 30 years. It’s also interesting to look at just the sekitori bouts because the data for that in the SumoDB goes back a little further.
Juryo and Makuuchi divisions only
I just wanted to look back to 1985 because that’s the year Back to the Future takes place and it’s a great movie. My theory is, the fall of Communism lead to the collapse of Yorikiri. Then the real estate bubble and Global Financial Crisis lead to a brief bounce in its popularity as Socialist forces mobilized and governments moved again to the Left. After a brief correction due to Angelina Jolie’s leg in 2012, the Yorikiri leftists were on the march again, until 2016 when the world just went ape shit and the oshidashists took over.
Just kidding. It is interesting to see that yorikiri has had a couple of boomlets in these two divisions over the past twenty years. When I looked at just Jonokuchi through Sandanme, however, it looks like yorikiri is coming back in a big way. Again, it’s way to early to really tell…I’m just having a laugh while looking at pretty graphs.
