You might be reeling from the results of the surprising senshuraku tomoe-sen, but if you missed the news that Tachiai has partnered with BuySumoTickets.com to give away a pair of tickets to Hakuho’s upcoming Danpatsushiki, then click on over here to go to the contest page!
We’ve since received word that the event is sold out, so this represents a great chance for a sumo fan without tickets to see the former Dai-Yokozuna’s intai-zumo event. The contest will conclude on December 1.
Details of the contest are on the initial post, along with contest rules & requirements. Leave a comment on the original post with your best Hakuho memory for a chance to win!
Tachiai is delighted to partner with BuySumoTickets.com to bring our readers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
We are giving away two tickets to see the legendary former dai-Yokozuna Hakuho’s Danpatsushiki, his intai-zumo event in the Kokukigan where the all time record 45 Yusho winner’s oicho-mage will be severed amidst a special day of sumo activities and action.
We are grateful to the team at BuySumoTickets.com for giving our readers this opportunity!
Hakuho’s haircut extravaganza will take place on January 28. If you don’t know what a Danpatsushiki entails, official Kyokai YouTube channel Sumo Prime Time has recently produced a really cool video that shows some of what to expect, featuring footage from another recent event.
While Hakuho has recently been installed as elder Miyagino and has been running his stable for some months, this traditional event has been carried out for generations upon generations and marks the official end of life as a rikishi.
What You Need to Do
Please read this VERY CAREFULLY:
If you would like to enter this contest, please comment on this post with your favourite memory of Hakuho. It could be a classic match, a winning move, a record setting achievement, or another accomplishment from his career. Be as direct or as detailed as you like. Tachiai’s editor-in-chief, Andy will also be joining the judging panel. We want to send dedicated Hakuho fans to this event!
Your username on this site must be connected to the email address where we can reach you. If you win, we will need to verify certain criteria for our partner:
Tickets will ONLY be shipped to a hotel or residence IN JAPAN. To win, you will either need to live in Japan, or be able to receive the tickets at your hotel.
If you win this contest and do not live in Japan, you must be able to book and travel to Japan for the event on January 28 (or have a trip already booked) and you must be able to confirm your itinerary including flight details within seven days of the closing of the contest. As you can imagine, these tickets are in extremely high demand and BuySumoTickets needs to confirm that our contest winner will be able to use the tickets. If we are not able to confirm your itinerary, we will need to select another winner.
The contest will conclude on December 1st, and the winner will be notified in the days following, once judging is complete.
The Tickets
The winner will receive 2 Arena “C” tickets in the Kokugikan’s upper deck.
The doors open at 10:00 and the event time is from 11:00-16:00. COVID protocols will be in place, please read more on BuySumoTickets.com’s event page.
If you would like to ensure your place at the event, you can also simply order tickets in the remaining seating categories from BuySumoTickets.com by clicking here.
Multiple members of Team Tachiai have used the BuySumoTickets service on many occasions, and would recommend it also should you wish to travel to Japan upcoming basho, now that international visitors are once again permitted to enter the country.
If you missed it, we also interviewed them a couple years ago to learn more about what folks might not know about sumo ticketing. While times have changed in sumo since then, there are still some great insights in that conversation.
Thanks once again to BuySumoTickets.com for this opportunity – we look forward to enjoying our readers’ memories of Hakuho!
Kokugikan hosted the retirement ceremony for Ozeki Kotoshogiku on Saturday. His 18-year career started in maezumo back in 2002, along-side his buddy and high school sumo rival, Toyonoshima. (Toyonoshima actually claimed the Jonokuchi title in their debut, with a win over Kotoshogiku along the way. Toyonoshima then beat Kotoshogiku in the Jonidan playoff to earn that yusho.) His career as an active wrestler came to an end near his Fukuoka hometown in November 2020. But his career as a coach has just begun, using the name Hidenoyama-oyakata.
We can blame the pandemic for the nearly two-year delay in getting his haircut, so newer Tachiai readers may not have seen Kotoshogiku compete at all, much less during his prime. On the dohyo, he was known for his sujo-pleasing “gabburi-yori,” hip-thrusting technique. What it boiled down to was this: he’d wrap his opponent up, ideally with a firm belt grip but sometimes just a big ole bear hug, and use those massive thighs to basically hop his opponent out of the ring. He also had a signature component of his pre-bout ritual where he would do this deep back-bend, the Kiku-Bauer (菊バウアー), his version of the イナバウアー.
(There was a famous German figure skater named Ina Bauer-Szenes who was known for deep back bends in the late 1950s. Her signature move, the “Ina Bauer”, was adopted and popularized by Japanese Olympian, Arakawa Shizuka in the early 2000s.)
The Chrysanthemum, featured here on his kesho mawashi, is a motif tied closely to Kotoshogiku because it comes from his surname, Kitutsugi (菊次) . The kanji character, 菊, is the character for Chrysanthemum and is pronounced either Kiku or Giku. It resonates with Japanese because of the symbolism of the Kiku and its ties to the Emperor. The Chrysanthemum Throne refers to the Japanese monarchy. Those learning Japanese will be familiar with how sometimes pronunciation changes, often to make it a bit easier to say, so Kiku becomes Giku. Try to say “Kotoshokiku” three times fast and you’ll see it’s just a bit easier to say, “Kotoshogiku.”
The Ozeki
In a testament to his longevity, his Ozeki run actually dates way back in 2011 as sumo returned to action after the match-fixing scandal forced the cancellation of the Osaka tournament and the calamitous Tohoku earthquake. That May, Hakuho was the lone Yokozuna while the Ozeki ranks were full with the likes of Kaio, Kotooshu, Baruto, and Harumafuji. Three tournaments and thirty-three wins later, Kotoshogiku debuted as Ozeki in front of his home-crowd in Fukuoka in November 2011. Kisenosato was promoted to Ozeki at the next tournament, and the two rivals would fight it out as fellow Ozeki for the next six years, until Kisenosato was promoted to Yokozuna and Kotoshogiku was demoted to Sekiwake.
I would be remiss not to mention his demotion and the grudge some sumo fans hold toward Terunofuji because of it. At the Haru-basho of 2017, he had already been demoted to Sekiwake after a terrible 5-10 showing in January. With five losses and three days remaining in the tournament, Kotoshogiku had to win out in order to reclaim his Ozeki rank. On Day 14, Kotoshogiku faced Terunofuji. The henka resulted in Kotoshogiku’s sixth loss making the demotion permanent.
Kotoshogiku continued to fight for nearly four years as a rank-and-file wrestler. There were some hopes that Toyonoshima, then down in Makushita and fighting to regain a slot in Juryo, might be able to rise high enough back into Makuuchi for the two rivals to fight again. But it was not to be. Toyonoshima was demoted back into Makushita in early 2020 and retired early in the pandemic, his last competitive bout during the Silent Basho. Kotoshogiku stayed until November when he closed out his career back in Kyushu.
The Delayed Retirement
A retiring Ozeki deserves a party. So Kotoshogiku waited until he could throw a proper party at Kokugikan. That means jinku singing, hanazumo, and hair-dressing demonstrations. It’s helpful to be a part of a storied stable like Sadogatake where there are three Makuuchi wrestlers so that no matter where you were in the audience, you got a pretty good view. Each of them also did their own versions of the Kiku-Bauer backbend as tribute to Kotoshogiku.
The retirement ceremony also featured a host of his old friends and rivals taking turns cutting his hair, including Toyonoshima, Kisenosato, Hakuho, and yes…Vader (aka Terunofuji). [Vader’s helmet was supposed to evoke a Japanese kabuto and I think of it every time I see Terunofuji’s oicho-mage.] His sons faced him on the dohyo for his final bout. His home Sadogatake beya also featured an 8-way round robin among their Sandanme and Makushita wrestlers, won by Kotohaguro. Up-and-comer Kototebakari lost to Kotohaguro in the first round.
I was glad to see a fitting tribute to Kotoshogiku’s great career. There’s quite a lot of coaches there at Sadogatake, with a couple of high-rankers, so I am curious if he will be able to wait to inherit the stable or whether he will have to branch out on his own, sooner. If anyone has any insight into the the future of Hidenoyama, please drop some knowledge in the comments. Tomorrow, we will see another retirement ceremony, this time for Sokokurai.
NHK World Japan posted an overview of Kisenosato’s sumo career and his retirement ceremony to YouTube. While fans will recall that we had some audience-recorded video earlier, this is a nice, professional cut of the events that includes behind the scenes / not seen footage.
