It’s the weekend, and I’ll try to fill the gaps for the days we have missed from the Jungyo. If I can’t… well, we’ll have to skip a few days. Let’s get to it.
🌐 Location: Gifu, Gifu prefecture.
The sekitori, their tsukebito, gyoji, tokoyama, yobidashi, oyakata, and all the rest, started their journey from the Dolphins Arena in Nagoya, where the Nagoya basho took place. It was a rainy day.
Continue readingDay 3 took place at Kusatsu, Shiga prefecture. Day 4 took place at Echizen, Fukui prefecture. Here are some of the things that happened, on and off the Jungyo.
Yeah, we couldn’t do without those, could we? Takanosho, a.k.a Onigiri-kun, injured his right knee during practice, and left for Tokyo, joining his two heya mates who are already kyujo, Takakeisho and Takagenji. The only Chiganoura sekitori to stay in the Jungyo is Takanofuji, the evil twin. I hope it’s not one of those career-shattering injuries.
And Ryuko, who was having a streak of bad luck ever since he had the privilege of being Aminishiki’s last opponent, also made his way to Tokyo with an injury. It’s not clear whether it’s a new injury or a lingering one from the basho.
Meanwhile, we are informed that neither Takakeisho nor Takayasu will be joining this Jungyo at all. Chiganoura oyakata says Takakeisho’s state is improving every day, but still, he is not practicing at the moment, taking treatments and rehab with a specialized trainer. He will apparently not be in until banzuke day, and then, says Chiganoura oyakata “We’ll see if he can wrestle sekitori”.
As for Takayasu… you can see for yourself. Torn ligament, arm in a cast. He is not supposed to be in the keiko-ba (practice ground) at all, but he is, though apparently, mostly moving a bit and bossing the youngsters around. I’m more worried about him, with his heya’s history of… Kisenosato… than I am about Takakeisho, though.
Three years ago today (July 31), former Great Yokozuna Chiyonofuji, AKA “The Wolf”, died age 61. Members of Kokonoe beya participating in the Jungyo, including tokoyama Tokotake (I hope I got that right) and Gyoji Konosuke, held a moment of silence in his memory:
OK, enough sad news. Yesterday, Mitakeumi had his first on-dohyo practice.
On that occasion, he told the press he was very dissatisfied with his result in Nagoya – a mere 9 wins – and declared he was aiming for double figures and the possible start of an Ozeki run in Aki. “I keep telling myself I am the next Ozeki”. So far he is mostly getting reverse butsukari – yesterday he was pushing TV star Tochiozan, today Abi. His moshi-ai results are not exactly Ozeki-level. He had 5 bouts with Tamawashi, Ryuden et al., won 2 and lost 3. But the Jungyo is still young.
Yesterday Hakuho rested his inner khan, giving nobody kawaigari. But today, he was back. He told Kizakiumi he might go with him, getting a nervous laugh, but eventually decided to break the shin-Juryo pattern, and go with Tomokaze. That was a 7 minutes ordeal, as befits someone who is much more likely to actually meet Hakuho on the dohyo some time soon.
Yes, white-haired guy on the other side of the dohyo, Hakuho is actually tripping his victim as he is trying to push. Kawaigari is great fun!
As for Kizakiumi, Hakuho said “Well, the Jungyo has just begun!”
Kototsurugi (the official sumo illustrator, a former rikishi) created a design for a new line of Enho products, and had Enho promoting it for him:
Enho is depicted as Issun-Boshi in this design. Issun-Boshi, the tiny hero who leaves his parents’ house to sail the seas in a rice bowl with a chopstick for an oar, is the Japanese equivalent of Tom Thumb.
Of course, somebody else would need to empty that rice bowl for him, though, because Enho himself is famous for his dislike for cooked white rice.
I predict this line of merchandise (I have seen this shirt and a lunch bag so far) will be scooped off the shelves as soon as it hits them. Enho is the hottest thing in Sumodom at the moment.
Today’s event took place at Habikino, Osaka. By the way, the English language tour schedule on the NSK website is wrong. It’s actually last year’s schedule.
So, as expected, Hakuho keeps giving kawaigari to youngsters. This time, no genetics – he just picked up Ichiyamamoto, from Nishonoseki beya. You can see him in the photo above, observed by Okinoumi, Shohozan (his senior heya mate), and Tochiozan. Coincidentally, I’ll be talking more about both Okinoumi and Tochiozan further down.
Back to the victim himself, he got five minutes of kawaigari, which is a considerable time (though Hakuho has been known to give 8 minutes or more in the past. I guess not to beginners). Hakuho said he was hitting him too high, which makes sense, because Ichiyamamoto’s sumo style is very close to Abi’s and as you can see, he has rather long legs as well. Hakuho added that there was something fragile about him, but that he does have a “core” and “if there was nothing good about him, he wouldn’t be a sekitori”. Well, I guess that’s the sort of compliments you get when you don’t have yokozuna DNA.
Ichiyamamoto is an odd bird in the world of Sumo. He graduated from Chuo university and became a government worker up in his home area of Hokkaido. But then he decided to switch to professional Sumo, taking advantage of the extended age limit working wrestlers may enjoy, as he was just past his 23rd birthday.
So now he is a sekitori, and he said the practice with Hakuho “gave his status as a sekitori a sense of reality”.
The reporters asked Hakuho if he intended to do Kizakiumi and Ryuko next. He just gave them a big grin. He said “maybe tomorrow the young ones will say there is a devil on the dohyo”. I guess that means he will keep the kawaigari flowing.
Moving on to the next figure in the photo, it was Okinoumi’s 34th birthday today. Mazel tov. His ototo-deshi (younger heya mate), Hokutofuji, gave him a cake.
Okinoumi was a bit embarrassed at the attention, and said he prefers to stand out on the dohyo, and off it he would like to be just an old-fashioned man.
So what about Tochiozan? Well, the day before this Jungyo event, this was aired on TBS. It’s from an episode in a serialized drama called “No-side game”.
The guys practicing at Kasugano beya are supposedly some sort of Rugby club. I’m not sure what that skinny dude is supposed to do in a Rugby club, or what the plot is in general. But anyway, this having aired the day before caused a swarm of reporters to land on Tochiozan today (Tochinoshin being kyujo, he missed the 15 minutes of glory).
Tochiozan was mighty pleased with all the attention. As it turns out, this was filmed some time in June, before the Nagoya basho, for two and a half hours – after morning keiko. Tochiozan recalls “it was quite tiring, since it was after keiko and all, and some of these guys are pro wrestlers and hit rather hard”. There were also former National Team members (in Rugby, I assume) among the group. And he was doing most of the butsukari. Tochinoshin just stepped in for the “star moment”. It’s good to be an Ozeki. Tochiozan recalls he kept getting instructions to assume a more fierce expression and to avoid laughing.
All that attention must have done the veteran some good, because in today’s Jungyo practice, he had 11 rounds of moshi-ai with Tamawashi, Abi, and others, and won 9 of them. Dosukoi!
Hello readers. This Jungyo I am going to adopt a different format for my Jungyo reports.
The truth is, posting a full Jungyo report every day is beyond my capabilities at the moment. Curating the various photos and tweets takes hours. So I will only be able to do the full ones on weekends (by which I mean Friday and Saturday, possibly Thursday as well). I’ll try to bring some news every day as and if they surface, but it will be in short format.
Today was the first day. The event took place at Gifu city, Gifu prefecture. The tour left Nagoya yesterday, and arrived at Gifu today.
The rikishi were briefed by the Jungyo master, Kasugano, who warned them to be careful what they do in their time off – because they might get caught on some fan’s camera in a compromising situation. As usual, it’s “make sure you’re not caught”, rather than “make sure you don’t do idiotic stuff”.
Bruce has already mentioned the absences from the Jungyo, but here is the full list again: Goeido, Tochinoshin, Takayasu, Takakeisho, Yoshikaze, Kaisei, Takagenji and Mitoryu.
Ikioi, despite his troubles, is not absent. The Hakkaku and Isenoumi sekitori, with the full staff of their heyas, actually had a short training camp at Okinoshima in Shimane prefecture, Okinoumi’s home town. Okinoumi, Hokutofuji, Nishikigi and Ikioi, together with their designated tsukebito had an early departure back to Nagoya to join the Jungyo.
Another one who is injured and yet present at the Jungyo is Enho – both his shoulder and his ankle are still far from great. He says he will give priority to healing them – but still, he showed up today, including having a (rather entertaining) bout with Toyonoshima. I’ll have that in my weekend collection for sure.
Kakuryu spent a few days in Mongolia following his yusho. He has been away from home for two years – in part because foreign rikishi who are kyujo are not allowed to travel, and he had long periods of kyujo in those two years. He went there accompanied by his… okami san. Yes, that’s his heya-master’s wife. He came back two days ago, refreshed, and said he ate too much mutton and needed some light Japanese summer food.
Regarding all the absences, Hakuho announced he will be pulling everybody behind him. He said in general he wants to do more coaching this Jungyo. Which means, of course, lots of kawaigari. I will, of course, keep you posted if he actually does anything that’s actually educational, the way Harumafuji used to do. In the meantime, he already latched on to poor Kotonowaka, and gave him five minutes of kawaigari. By the way, if you are new here or don’t remember what kawaigari is, I refer you to a previous post where I described it at length. Look for the part starting with “Butsukari is a drill…”
Kotonowaka is the son of the former Kotonowaka, currently Sadogatake oyakata, and the grandson of Yokozuna Kotozakura, the former owner of the same heya. Hakuho picked him because “He has Yokozuna DNA”. Which should signal to Hoshoryu and Naya that they may want to consider postponing becoming sekitori, at least until Hakuho retires.
Kotonowaka was actually very thankful for the experience. The victims usually are. But he was using words like “It was like being in a different dimension” and so on, and “He just absorbed my body slams like a sponge” (he’s not the first one to notice this about Hakuho).
So untypically for Hakuho, he is on the dohyo from day 1 of the Jungyo (usually, at least in recent times, he has been starting the Jungyo on the sidelines, only starting on-dohyo activities after a couple of weeks). He is also on the torikumi list, though I’m sure neither he nor Kakuryu are going to take the “official” bouts too seriously.
Kakuryu, on the other hand, sticks to his usual plan. He has a very exact training regime and I expect he will stick to it through this Jungyo as he always does.
That’s it for today, and I hope to have some news for you tomorrow.