This summer, Tatsunami beya opened its virtual doors to foreign fans for the first time. They currently offer two subscription plans and it appears two more subscription options are being designed. The cheapest option is a $5/month plan which offers “behind the scenes” video content. There is not a lot there, currently. The other option is $20/mo and includes the video content as well as a banzuke for each tournament — and supposedly an option to watch keiko sessions.

Since I have not been to Japan for a spell, I have not been able to take full advantage of membership and watch keiko. There is a warning that keiko might not be open and even if it is there is limited seating available, anyway. If I get a chance to attend, I will post about it then.

Tatsunami-beya is located north of the popular tourist sites of Asakusa, so I do imagine this will be a relatively convenient for a lot of sumo fans who make the trip to Tokyo. If there isn’t space available, there is plenty to see and do in the area. It would suck to travel out to, say, Saitama prefecture only to be told “no room for you.”

I say this hike is doable but I walk, a lot. It’s a 1.6km, 24-minute walk to Sensoji from Tatsunami. That’s farther than I remember but I had walked from Ryogoku, over the bridge to Kuramae, then up to Tatsunami and back down to Senso-ji. Just for fun. Anyway, your mileage may vary.

Back on topic, I signed up for the club because I have been wanting to join an official support club for a while and since this one offered the banzuke mailing, I thought other readers and sumo fans would be interested and I could share my experience. It’s the heya of Yokozuna Hoshoryu and Meisei. They have a relatively active social media presence on YouTube.

I got my first banzuke a couple of weeks ago – for this past Aki basho – and it seems like a great opportunity to discuss the banzuke in more detail. I thought this might be Hoshoryu’s first win as Yokozuna but it turned out to go the way of Onosato in rather dramatic fashion. It was certainly a memorable event.

The Ranking Sheet

The kanji characters for banzuke are, 番付. You will sometimes see it called the banzuke-hyo or 番付表, which basically means the ranking list. Nominally, most people are interested in the ranking list of the wrestlers but there is quite a bit more to it. The wrestlers are not the only names listed. I like to think of it as “the credits” for the entire show that the Kyokai puts on for us. The whole production is here.

Before mailing out ranking sheets, the heya will stamp it with the name of the heya. I’ve seen where some of the small heya will also use highlighter to indicate which wrestlers are from that heya. Here, you can see my banzuke marked with the stamp for Tatsunami-beya (立浪部屋).

Professional Sumo is an entertainment industry. The Sumo Association exists to sell tickets and put butts in seats — or at least on nice, throwable cushions. Just as credits roll at the end of a movie as a way of acknowledging all of the people involved in the production, the banzuke exists as a way to give credit where it is due.

This post will not delve into the evolution of the sport or even the banzuke itself. I just want you to be able to know what you have in front of you. While wrestlers form the bulk of the ranking sheet, the other members of the association are listed. Notably, the referees (gyoji), the ringside judges (shinpan), the bout callers (yobidashi), as well as the guys who are usually behind the scenes, like the hair-dressers (tokoyama), and the sewanin, wakamonogashira and the other sumo elders.

A quick note about sources for this article. I am pulling from the Association website and will provide appropriate links for references since fluctuate with time. The Japanese-language side will help you decipher kanji, even for newbies to the Japanese language. But I’ll also have links to the English-language side page for the various profiles and such. It will help if you can at least read hiragana because shikona and elder names are usually listed with the hiragana. Ring names are notoriously difficult, even for native Japanese to keep up with.

Format

Keep in mind that Japanese is often read from right-to-left and top-to-bottom. Those of you who are learning the language already know that much of what we use today is written left-to-right. But traditionally Japanese was read right-to-left, like in newspapers. And that’s how it is done for these banzuke.

So, structurally the ranking sheet is split with the right half showing the East wrestlers and the left half showing the West. You will be starting on the right and working your way across. The kanji character for East (東) is higashi and that’s at the top of the right column. Nishi means West (西) and is at the top of the left column. In the center, between the two sides, there is a slim column with other details about the tournament and more in the bottom row, which we will get to later.

But first, let’s look at the East and West. The number of wrestlers fluctuates for any given tournament. The number of wrestlers in the top four divisions, however, are relatively fixed. Those numbers have been adjusted at different periods as recruitment swells or shrinks but will stay at these fixed levels for years without much change. Currently, (2025) the top Makuuchi division is set at 42 wrestlers with Juryo at 28, Makushita at 120 and Sandanme at 160.

The rest are mostly in Jonidan. Jonokuchi is the lowest division and is mainly for wrestlers who are just starting out in the sport. There are some wrestlers who do not appear on the banzuke, including recruits who have not completed maezumo or men recovering from injuries that have fallen out of the list of active wrestlers.

Wrestlers

Wrestlers are listed on this sheet in their official rank order for the tournament. Each wrestler’s full ring name (shikona) is preceded by his shusshin or hometown. The shusshin and shikona are written vertically, and in order from right to left. You will see the top division wrestlers…at the top and in bold. The first row of wrestlers is Makuuchi. If you are a new or casual sumo fan, these might be the only guys you know. They will likely be the only guys you see on TV or on the internet and the various highlights shows. The NHK and NHK World broadcasts only show the men in here, in the top division.

I want to give a brief note about these ring names. The full ring name includes a family name and a “given” name (what we in the West often call a “first name”) but we usually only see and hear wrestlers referred to by that name. I specifically try to avoid using the term “First Name” because in the Japanese convention, family name comes first and it might get confusing. So, for Endo, his full shikona is Endo Shota. I picked Endo specifically because he is one of the rare wrestlers who has always fought under his real name. He was born as Endo Shota and he fights as Endo Shota.

The vast majority of sumo wrestlers take an assumed name, at least for the family name. Some keep their given name, others change that, as well. There is some superstition around names and the number of brush strokes, so it is fairly common for a wrestler to change either part of the shikona. It’s also relatively common for a wrestler to change their shikona when they reach certain milestones, like promotion to Juryo, Ozeki, or Yokozuna.

There are also naming conventions associated with some stables. Wrestlers in Sadogatake stable take a shikona with the Koto- prefix. Current Ozeki Kotozakura’s full shikona is Kotozakura Masakatsu. He started his sumo career fighting as Kotokamitani because his real family name is Kamitani. He just stuck the koto prefix on the front. When he was promoted to Juryo he changed his shikona to Kotonowaka Masakatsu. Upon further promotion to Ozeki, he took the shikona Kotozakura.

Since there’s a family name and a given name, there will be at least two characters for each shikona on the banzuke but often four, five, or six characters. The first and last characters are written in nice rows of uniform width and height across this page. This makes it really easy for me to spot guys with short names and simple characters first. Guys with longer names and more complicated kanji seem to blend into a wall of ink, especially as the writing is more and more condensed.

On a banzuke, as in other things in life, size matters. The biggest names are for the biggest ranks and that starts with the Yokozuna and Ozeki. On this banzuke, we have a rare instance where Hoshoryu holds the Yokozuna-Ozeki title, so the ranks are squeezed together. Shikona start large and steadily get smaller as we move to the left, out of the sanyaku ranks and into the maegashira.

Holup! There are maegashira on the second row! Did they run out of room? No. These are Juryo wrestlers. The term maegashira is used here as a legacy term for wrestlers which have finished maezumo. After Juryo, the divisions and ranks are not differentiated for makushita on down. They’re just indicated with a stylized kanji for “same,” (同), or its simplified variant.

Referees and Judges

Smack in the middle of the banzuke, between the wrestler lists, is a column with more details about the tournament. At the top of this column are the characters, “蒙御免” (ごめんこうむる) or “received permission,” followed by the date. Historically, sumo was done to raise money. It was banned by the Tokugawa but those wrestlers who relied on the income pressed for permission to hold tournaments. So, the term carries over onto today’s ranking sheet — smack in the middle at the top.

Remember, we’re reading from right to left, so we’ve got the year first, then the dates of shonichi and senshuraku. Next is the location and then the announcement of the event: “a sumo tournament will be held (大相撲挙行仕候)”.

Moving down the column are the referees or Gyoji (行司), listed by rank. Remember, you will see these characters backwards on the banzuke because they’re read from right-to-left. There are six rows of referee names with the highest ranked “tate-gyoji” on top in larger characters. Then we get the shimpan, (審判) with two rows of judges’ names. Shimpan are sumo elders with the rank of i’in. So, on the banzuke they’re listed here as shimpan i’in (審判委員). There are twenty judges in total working ringside in groups of five. When you’re watching the bouts, two of the shimpan sit just off the dohyo behind the gyoji with one on each remaining side of the dohyo.

As a little tidbit, the shimpan opposite the gyoji is the head of that group and will be in charge of explaining any mono-ii, or judges conferences. The shimpan behind the gyoji and on his right side is the time-keeper. He’s charged with keeping things moving along. You’ll see him checking his watch, make hand gestures to keep others aware of how much time has elapsed between bouts or in those rare occasions that a bout is going long and the wrestlers might need a water break.

Other Association Members

Underneath the list of shimpan they have the name of the sumo association and its address in Tokyo. On either side, the bottom row contains the lowest ranked wrestlers on the right, the rest of the names of Sumo Association elders, the ring-callers (呼出し), and hair-stylists (床山). Each of these groups also indicate rank. You’ll probably not be able to easily read the names of the yobidashi and tokoyama but you will be able to tell which ones are the highest ranking because the characters will be slightly larger.

Sumo elders are former wrestlers who own or lease a share of stock (kabu) in the Association. I am not going to dive too deeply into the Association membership here but among the sumo elders, there are a number of specific ranks. The Board Members (理事) are on the right side, starting with the Board Chairman, currently Hakkaku Nobuyoshi. Then there are a few vice Board Members (副理事) and other Executive Association members (役員待遇) in “bold.” As we continue to move left, there are Association Members (委員), Chiefs (主任), Elders (年寄), and retired advisors (参与). The shimpan are not re-listed in this section. In rank order, they fall in with the i’in, as I mentioned above.

On the left side of the right column there is a list for a small group of seiwanin and wakaimonogashira. These men are former wrestlers who are not elders since they do not own a kabu. Like elders, yobidashi, and tokoyama they are associated with a heya and continue to work within the organization but not as owners.

Squeezed into the bottom left there is a phrase that references the maezumo wrestlers not listed on the banzuke (此外中前相撲東西ニ御座候) and a blessing that hopes the tournament is successful for thousands of years to come (千穐万歳大々叶).

Extra notes

There are a few other interesting items to note on this particular banzuke:

• For one, Hoshoryu is listed as Yokozuna-Ozeki. He holds both ranks on this banzuke. While it’s not necessary for a Yokozuna to be active, every tournament requires two Ozeki – one on the East and one on the West. Hoshoryu is a Yokozuna but in order to meet this technicality, he is also listed as Ozeki. Kotozakura is Ozeki on the East.
• Ishizaki’s name change is called out, as we see in this image. When he was promoted to Juryo he announced a new Shikona. In keeping with the Takasago naming convention using an Asa-prefix, he is now Asasuiryu. His previous shikona, Ishizaki, is noted above his new shikona.
• Tiny writing next to the names of the Top-Ranked referees indicate which number the line of gyoji they are. The current Kimura Shonosuke is the 39^th Kimura Shonosuke, for example.

Wrap-up

I hope you found this to be a helpful guide to the sumo ranking sheet. If you have one of these banzuke, or are looking for one, you should know where to look for the various background details, like date and location. There are a lot of tangential topics which I will cover in more depth in the future.