The tournament is over but we know that the Makuuchi yusho is not the final sumo thing for the year. There was still quite a bit of news coming out of Fukuoka this week and I wanted to take a moment to cover that in this news brief. Yes, we had the final tournament results and top division special prizes but we also had a group of retirements, Juryo promotions, and we now turn to Winter Jungyo!
Kyushu Hardware Distribution
As far as the yusho, we got a thrilling showdown between Kirishima and Atamifuji on Day 14, which Kirishima won, convincingly. Then he defeated Takakeisho on Senshuraku to seal his 13-2 title and claim the Golden Macaron. Ichiyamamoto, Kotonowaka, and Atamifuji won Fighting Spirit prizes. No technique prize was awarded and only Atamifuji had a shot at Outstanding Performance but he would have had to win the yusho.
In the lower divisions, we have an interesting group of yusho winners. As Leonid covered previously, the Juryo title was claimed by Kotoshoho. He had a tough go of things in the top division but has surely reclaimed a spot there with an exciting victory over Onosato (actually two). The video below has a replay from their playoff, as well as footage from the yusho award ceremony. As Leonid also covered, Satorufuji won the Makushita yusho. Daishoryu, Dairinzan, and Aonishiki won the Sandanme, Jonidan, and Jonokuchi titles, respectively.
Retirements
The Kyokai announced seven wrestlers who retired during the tournament.
Daijo debuted in 2007 and reached Makushita for the first time in 2013 before falling back into Sandanme. He climbed back into Makushita two more times, in 2017 and 2018, peaking at Makushita 43. Kototakuya debuted in 2018 and cracked into Makushita in the summer of last year, spending much of his career in Sandanme, and much of that career in the wild pandemic era. Kirizakura called “time” on a career that began in the Spring of 1999. At 176cm and 92kg, he fought his entire career in the lower divisions, peaking at Sandanme 69 in May of 2011 (a rather contentious time).
Chiyoshishi‘s retirement was known prior to the basho as a result of the unfortunate underage drinking scandal during the Aki Jungyo. Tamanowaka began his career in 2018, peaking in Jonidan. Young Itoga had a short sumo career, starting in May of this year, and retiring after clinching his first kachi-koshi in September, and promotion to Jonidan. Similarly, Raikisho made a short effort, spending much time banzuke-gai and peaking in Jonidan.
Juryo Promotions
Leonid was spot on with his predictions for the Juryo promotions. Takerufuji and Oshoumi have earned their first-time promotions while Hakuyozan and Tochimusashi return.
Winter Jungyo Preparations
The winter jungyo tour kicks off tomorrow in Yatsushiro, Kumamoto. This first week of the tour will hop around Kyushu with dates in Kumamoto, Miyazaki, Oita, and Fukuoka prefectures before spending next weekend in Nagasaki. Afterwards, they will pop over to Shikoku in Ehime, before going back to Honshu at Hiroshima and spending a few days around Osaka, Hyogo, and finally closing out the tour on Christmas Eve in Tochigi. From there, we’ll surely see a lot of New Year holiday events back in Tokyo. I’ll give weekly updates of the tour events and the holiday happenings leading into Hatsu basho!
Jungyo is making a comeback! Well, it’s actually been back since the summer after the COVID-induced break but it’s slowly gathering up steam. That first tour had four dates, the second one in the Fall had six and this December featured an 8-day tour through 12/14. This will give way to more celebrations and events around the New Year back in Tokyo.
Reiwa 4 (令和４年)
The official schedule for these tours is always available at the Kyokai website: https://sumo.or.jp/Jungyo/schedule/. There’s also an English version of the schedule available but the Japanese version provides a bit more detail, including contact information and links to the websites in order to get tickets.
One thing to navigate over there is the most recent year is at the top on the Japanese page. As a quick history/culture lesson, according to the traditional method for numbering years, it is the fourth year of the Reiwa era because it’s the fourth year of the reign of Emperor Naruhito. The Heiwa era was that of his father, Akihito, who retired in May 2019. For hardcore sumo fans, it can be helpful to at least be familiar with this system because the birthday information on the Kyokai website or on the SumoDB and sometimes on Wikipedia will use this system. And it’s just generally good to be familiar with the Showa, Heiwa, and Reiwa names. So if you’re looking for this year’s Jungyo schedule you look for Reiwa 4 and next year will obviously be Reiwa 5. There will be a test, so pay attention. When in town, Andy literally walks around Tokyo with exams ready to hand out to unsuspecting sumo fans…so be ready. The last poor sap was completely unprepared and failed. It was as if he didn’t even know what sumo was.
As we see from our handy-dandy map, this edition of the winter tour made a quick trek around Kyushu before crossing over to the main island of Honshu and making a bee-line in the direction of Tokyo with a couple of stops in the Kansai region for the last few dates. It’s nice. For a great rundown of what Jungyo is, please read Herouth’s excellent article. But in a nutshell, each venue hosts a one or two-day mini sumo “basho” with more of a focus on meeting fans (fansa or “fan service”) than serious sumo bouts. This is where you’ll see shokkiri (comedy sumo), and jinku (folk songs), along with demonstrations of how the hairdressers (tokoyama) tie the famous oicho-mage top-knot and traditional drumming by yobidashi.
It’s hard to mention shokkiri, though, without mention of Shobushi. The sumo world was rocked by Covid when Shobushi, a well-known shokkiri performer, succumbed to it early in the pandemic. So when you search for articles and YoutTube videos about shokkiri, many of them feature Shobushi. In this video, he’s the wrestler closer to the camera while Takamisato is his partner here.
For new sumo fans who may wonder why the sumo world was shut off from the public for so much longer, it seems, than the rest of Japan, that can provide some insight.
Shokkiri is a comic routine that acts as a bit of a tutorial for folks who are new to the sport, explaining the rules and traditions in a funny manner. The new Shokkiri team consists of Wakazakura and Tochimitsuru.
As Herouth mentioned in her post, the Kyokai particularly likes to feature local wrestlers. And this tour is no different. We will see more examples below but this particular tour stopped in Kyoto, home town of Wakazakura.
For a little background on this shokkiri team, both men are 27 years old and from Kasugano-beya, home of Tochinoshin and Aoiyama. Wakazakura is a Makushita-ranked wrestler, who started professional sumo pretty late, after graduating from Takushoku University and recently changed his shikona from Kawamoto. Tochimitsuru is from Kokubunji in an outer area of Tokyo.
Kyushu
There were four stops in Kyushu: Nagasaki, Ashikita, Beppu, and Kita Kyushu. From the Fukuoka Kokusai Center, the sekitori and select lower ranked wrestlers piled into buses and headed out for Nagasaki.
As the local feature, Tsushimanada got extra special attention from the Kyokai, fans, as well as the higher-ranking wrestlers. We got to see him doing butsukari-geiko with Ozeki, Takakeisho. I usually like to think of butsukari as a living, breathing, blocking sled.
Unfortunately, this video is taken from very far back and there are quite a few rows of fans (and rikishi) blocking most of the view. A key technique in sumo is to learn how to get low and drive your opponent up as well as back. You also hear great wrestlers talk about how they are able to dig in and make themselves heavy, almost impossible to push back. The higher-ranked wrestler will almost effortlessly block the lower-ranker from moving forward while the lower-ranker pushes themselves to exhaustion. When he gets to the tawara, or if he can’t push any farther, the higher-ranked wrestler will shrug him off to the clay.
Without a Yokozuna on the list, there’s no rope-tying demonstration and the musubi-no-ichiban was Takakeisho vs Shodai each night. Now, these are not real serious bouts. Sometimes I get the feeling the wrestlers take the butsukari more seriously than the bouts on these tours. If you follow me on Twitter, you found out that Mitakeumi would usually end up getting thrown by his opponent and rolling off the dohyo and bowling over Shodai.
Beppu is known for its hot springs but Ashikita is relatively a little-known city which brings us “sumo oranges.” As such, these tours are also a great opportunity for the Kyokai to work with sponsors and promoters. Here are Tochimusashi, Chiyomaru, and Chiyosakae chilling next to what I believe is a BMW iX, the German automaker’s new electric “Sports Activity Vehicle.”
The troupe headed back to Honshu for the second half of the tour. Soja-city in Okayama opened this leg with Osaka, Kyoto and Mie prefecture closing things out. Omoto was featured as the local boy. He’s spent most of his 7-year career in Makushita. He’d fallen briefly into Sandanme recently after injury but had a great time in Kyushu, achieving a 6-1 record and nearly clinching the heyagashira mantle at Irumagawa-beya. On banzuke day, we’ll probably still find Shishi at the top but the lead has surely narrowed considerably.
A whole bunch of rikishi come from Osaka but the highest ranking one is Ura, followed by Takekuma-beya’s Gonoyama. I had thought Goeido would draw more of his deshi from Osaka but so far Gonoyama seems to be the only one. Naruto’s Oshoryu is also from the area but since he was kyujo, I would doubt he made it for the trip.
So ends this abbreviated look at an abbreviated tour. I hope to bring more from the Spring tour.
As Herouth noted on Twitter, Takayasu will be kyujo from the upcoming Aki Jungyo. Hopefully this was a reassessment of his injury and not a training setback.
Takayasu will be absent from the Aki Jungyo. He participated in the Meiji Grand Shrine Tournament and said he wanted to be in the Jungyo, but something must have changed.https://t.co/Tn1hG5Aw5j
To update our earlier report about Takakeisho’s kyujo, Herouth also tweeted news that the re-Ozeki will participate in the latter half of Jungyo, starting with the Hamamatsu event on October 16.
Takakeisho intends to join the Jungyo in time for the Hamamatsu event on Oct. 16th. "Showing one's face to the public is also a part of a rikishi's job".https://t.co/LOTbwv27l4
The Nihon Sumo Kyokai announced eight wrestlers will not participate in the upcoming Fall tour (Jungyo). The tour is scheduled to begin on 10/5 in Ishikawa prefecture and end in Hiroshima prefecture on 10/27. Several popular top wrestlers will not participate due to injury while Takanofuji is listed as well, due to the ongoing bullying drama, in spite of his refusal to submit his resignation.
Aki Jungyo Injury Update
From the top division, Takakeisho, Ichinojo, and Tomokaze will be absent, and sorely missed. It’s a bit of a surprise that Tochinoshin will participate in the tour and not focus on recuperation. When the tour hits Kyushu, he will need to repeat his feat from this summer where he won 10 bouts as Sekiwake to reclaim his Ozeki status. Kadoban Takayasu will need to win 8 with his seriously damaged arm to avoid a similar fate in January.
From Juryo, there will be several missing wrestlers, including the fore-mentioned Takanofuji. Two Kokonoe wrestlers, Chiyoshoma and Chiyonoumi will miss the tour, along with Kyokushuho and Seiro. As Leonid mentioned in his Aki Wrap-Up article, Seiro and Chiyonoumi are headed back to Makushita.
Tachiai wishes all of the injured rikishi a full recovery and an awesome Kyushu.
