As I mentioned in a previous comment the health of current Yokozuna are questionable and if they had been any other rank they would have dropped out of the top division already. With this news...
As I mentioned in a previous comment the health of current Yokozuna are questionable and if they had been any other rank they would have dropped out of the top division already. With this news Kakuryu has dropped out or completely missed 4 of the 5 tournaments this year (there are usually 6, but May was cancelled because of COVID).
As yokozuna cannot be demoted if he does not show up and compete for all of the January 2021 tournament he will be forced to retire.
Don't want to make another post, so I'll just add the news in a comment here: The other Yokozuna Hakuho has also announced that he won't participate in this month's basho. Like Kakuryu he has...
Don't want to make another post, so I'll just add the news in a comment here:
Now, what makes this a little more interesting is that Hakuho has been seen practicing hard and practicing with other stables as well, so he seemed perfectly healthy for this month's tournament. However, in sumo there is quite a bit of honor involved and this could very well be a move by Hakuho to help out Kakuryu. If Hakuho had competed and did well, as would be expected of the top ranked rikishi, it would look poorly on Kakuryu and perhaps make a bigger push for Kakuryu's retirement. If both don't compete and both had issues being healthy this year it's unlikely the sumo association would make either retire in January.
There's also the fact that sumo elders, those that run the stables and the association itself, must retire completely at 65. Miyagino Oyakata, who runs Hakuho's stable, will turn 65 in 2022. So there is a feeling that Hakuho is waiting for Miyagino to retire so that he would be the obvious successor to take over the stable without having to procure Japanese Sumo Association elder stock (the 104 shares available to be in the sumo assocation leadership and be allowed to run or coach a sumo stable) as he is dai-yokozuna, meaning he is among the most successful of the retiring yokozuna. So he'd be offered the share on status alone.
Kakuryu isn't so lucky. His stablemaster, Michinoku Kazuhiro, won't turn 65 for another 4 years, isn't the more successful of the retiring yokozuna, and Kakuryu hasn't earned Japanese citizenship yet (he, like many top wrestlers, is Mongolian). To be allowed to have elder stock you must be a Japanese citizen, so if he retires or is forced to do so he cannot be offered or given stock, cannot run a stable, and doesn't have the opportunities that Hakuho would. Which would be a very sad state of affairs and an extreme waste of his talents and experience bringing up new generations of rikishi. If he is at least a Japanese citizen he can be on the sumo association council for 5 years while he waits for another elder to retire and get their stock.
Any particularly valid reasons for that, or is it just a longstanding tradition that nobody has bothered to really challenge yet? It seems pretty remarkably unfair from my outside perspective,...
To be allowed to have elder stock you must be a Japanese citizen
Any particularly valid reasons for that, or is it just a longstanding tradition that nobody has bothered to really challenge yet? It seems pretty remarkably unfair from my outside perspective, especially considering, as you said, many of the top wrestlers are Mongolian.
p.s. Thanks for providing these little peaks into the world of Sumo. :)
There is a reason, the validity is up to each individual to decide. The reason is one Japan's favorite pastimes: xenophobia It wasn't a rule until 1976 which is around the time that foreign born...
Any particularly valid reasons for that
There is a reason, the validity is up to each individual to decide. The reason is one Japan's favorite pastimes: xenophobia
It wasn't a rule until 1976 which is around the time that foreign born rikishi (namely Hawaiian born Takamiyama) began to appear in the top ranks and start winning. In 1968 Takamiyama was the first foreign born rikishi to reach the top division and in 1972 he was the first foreign born rikishi to win a tournament. He expressed interest in becoming and elder and in 1976 the JSA added the citizenship requirement. Takamiyama still became a citizen in 1980 and to continue his list of firsts, he was the first foreign born elder in 1984.
The Mongolians are feared across sumo because their upbringing in the tradition of the "Three Manly Disciplines" (wrestling, horsemanship, archery) are a deeply engrained part of their culture and they start all three at extremely young ages while most Japanese wrestlers don't begin training until their teens. Mongolians began arriving in sumo in the early 90's and have been dominant since nearly the beginning. In 2002 the sumo association implemented a rule that THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE (sorry, Highlander joke) foreign born rikishi per stable. Their argument was that "foreigners have difficulty adapting to Japanese customs", but the reality is that it's an attempt to keep a Japanese sport Japanese. I haven't done a count of all the current wrestlers (mostly because the SumoDB is down at the moment), but it's usually something like 6-7% of all wrestlers are foreign born, but of the 42 wrestlers in the top division eleven (26%) are foreign born (from Mongolia, Georgia, Bulgaria, and Brazil).
Wrestlers that were already part of a stable when the rule was implemented in 2002 were grandfathered in, but no more can be added to a stable until all foreign born wresters in that stable retire.
Oof. Yeah, 1976 is not a longstanding tradition at all, and that definitely seems to have been a pretty blatantly xenophobic reason to have implemented it. The rule about only so many foreigners...
Oof. Yeah, 1976 is not a longstanding tradition at all, and that definitely seems to have been a pretty blatantly xenophobic reason to have implemented it. The rule about only so many foreigners allowed per stable is even more blatant too, IMO. Lame. :(
If your guess as to why Hakuho is also withdrawing from tournaments is true, that it is in part to protect Kakuryu's ability to become an elder, that's pretty cool though. Thanks for all the insight. :)
In post basho news, as predicted, both Hakuho and Kakuryu were given a ‘warning’ by the Yokozuna Deliberation Council. The YDC has three levels it can use when unhappy with a yokozuna:...
In post basho news, as predicted, both Hakuho and Kakuryu were given a ‘warning’ by the Yokozuna Deliberation Council.
The YDC has three levels it can use when unhappy with a yokozuna:
Encouragement - This is a grin and grit through their teeth way for them to save face, not insult the yokozuna/honor, while making it clear they expect them to perform.
Warning - This means what it sounds like: "Compete and do so at the level we expect of yokozuna or we'll move to level 3."
If it comes to that, does the retirement "recommendation" actually have any teeth? Or is this all just passive aggressive posturing on the council's part?
If it comes to that, does the retirement "recommendation" actually have any teeth? Or is this all just passive aggressive posturing on the council's part?
That gets into some weird Japanese sumo politics. A little history... The Yokozuna Deliberation Council (YDC) was created in the 1950's in a response to the Japan Sumo Association (JSA)...
Exemplary
That gets into some weird Japanese sumo politics. A little history...
The Yokozuna Deliberation Council (YDC) was created in the 1950's in a response to the Japan Sumo Association (JSA) threatening to knock some Yokozuna that had missed a couple of bouts (not entire tournaments, just bouts) down to Ozeki. Up until that point the tradition of 'yokozuna can only retire' had stood, no yokozuna had been demoted, and no threats to do so were made.1 During this period in the 50's one yokozuna was injured and unable to compete and the other two had skipped days because they were at risk of having a losing tournament.2 The JSA was tired of the shenanigans and made the "I'll bust you down to ozeki so fast it'll make your head spin" threat and a post-WW2 Japan trying desperately to hold onto their traditions in the wake of massive westernization said "hold the frack up!" Even though the JSA threat was shelved, the external committee (the YDC) of sumo experts was set up in order to ensure only the most worthy candidates (namely ones who theoretically wouldn’t be continually absent) were promoted and as a response to a JSA that was seen to be overreaching its authority.
So now you have the JSA running the show and the YDC saying who should and shouldn't be promoted to the top spot of yokozuna along with being the body that has these three levels of warning and can reprimand/slap fines/pay cuts onto misbehaving yokozuna.3 The "rules" (again, unofficially official) for who gets a promotion to yokozuna are well known and haven't been altered (or ignored due to the aforementioned xenophobia) for many decades, so while the YDC will make the recommendation that a rikishi be promoted to yokozuna, by the time they do so it's already a given. So the YDC seems to just be a formality at that point, right? Being that this is Japan's oldest sport, the national sport, has been around for over a thousand years, 99.9% of the time everything is done by the book and no intervention is needed, but the YDC is there for that 0.1% when some Hatakikomi (sumo slap down winning technique) is necessary.
An "encouragement" statement is rare, a "warning" even more so, "retirement recommendation" pretty much would only happens if the yokozuna breaks Japanese law and/or if it was obvious they were going to retire anyway and even then is nearly unheard of because no yokozuna would want the dishonor and disrespect of being told to retire.
In a purely hypothetical situation of what is technically possible where a completely unorthodox and defiant yokozuna decides to call the YDC and JSA's bluff, says he cannot/will not compete, causing the YDC to issue a retirement recommendation, and the yokozuna refuses to do so, the YDC/JSA can dock all of his pay and the YDC can even throw their hands up and just tell the JSA "screw tradition, demote him". Once out of the top spot demotions continue until you're down in Jonokuchi, which is the lowest ranked division where the high school children compete. At that point your elder stock has been revoked, people on the street that would normally be falling over themselves to meet any professional sumo wrestler, let alone a yokozuna, won't even make eye contact with you, and who knows if you're even allowed to compete because there's a solid chance your disrespect has caused you to be kicked out of your sumo stable. All of this wouldn't happen, but ultimately the YDC most definitely has teeth, just a matter of if the yokozuna want to see if they'll bite.
1
There technically isn't a rule that says "Yokozuna can't be demoted" just the tradition that it is a highly honored position and so if you are a yokozuna and you can no longer perform to the standard then you should do the honorable thing and retire; no one wants to watch a has-been. Sumo has a lot of unofficial official rules and the culture doesn't really challenge them.
2
This still happens today with yokozuna suddenly having a suspicious injury or illness if they aren't winning; no one really buys it, but they also aren't going to call the yokozuna a liar.
3
Stoicism is the rule in all of sumo, if you lose you are expected to do so with unemotional grace. If you win, you are expected to do look like a statue of respect, etiquette, and manners. Yokozuna are held to the highest standard with near zero deviations from expectations. Hakuho was reprimanded and docked 10% of his pay for three months because he led/started a traditional Japanese cheer (sanbon-jime) from the ring at the end of his speech during the closing ceremonies of a tournament. This is already done at the end of the closing ceremony, but he did it early. Boom, reprimand.
Some leeway is given to lower ranked rikishi though, even more so in extreme situations and where handing down punishment for not adhering to etiquette would be a massive PR nightmare.4
4
A perfect example is from January of this year when Tokushoryu, the lowest ranked rikishi in the top division, won the tournament with a 14-1 record with an incredible 13 win streak after his college sumo mentor passed away during the tournament and straight up burst into tears in the ring. Warning, understandably emotional crying fat man may trigger feelings you didn't know you had. I appreciate when some emotion is shown after a tough bout and while not frequent it does happen and is allowed to slide, but I'd never want the extremes of NFL touchdown celebrations to be in sumo. A simple look of shock, relief, furrowed brow, or surprise is plenty.
As I mentioned in a previous comment the health of current Yokozuna are questionable and if they had been any other rank they would have dropped out of the top division already. With this news Kakuryu has dropped out or completely missed 4 of the 5 tournaments this year (there are usually 6, but May was cancelled because of COVID).
As yokozuna cannot be demoted if he does not show up and compete for all of the January 2021 tournament he will be forced to retire.
Don't want to make another post, so I'll just add the news in a comment here:
The other Yokozuna Hakuho has also announced that he won't participate in this month's basho. Like Kakuryu he has dropped out or missed several tournaments with Hakuho only completing one full basho.
Now, what makes this a little more interesting is that Hakuho has been seen practicing hard and practicing with other stables as well, so he seemed perfectly healthy for this month's tournament. However, in sumo there is quite a bit of honor involved and this could very well be a move by Hakuho to help out Kakuryu. If Hakuho had competed and did well, as would be expected of the top ranked rikishi, it would look poorly on Kakuryu and perhaps make a bigger push for Kakuryu's retirement. If both don't compete and both had issues being healthy this year it's unlikely the sumo association would make either retire in January.
There's also the fact that sumo elders, those that run the stables and the association itself, must retire completely at 65. Miyagino Oyakata, who runs Hakuho's stable, will turn 65 in 2022. So there is a feeling that Hakuho is waiting for Miyagino to retire so that he would be the obvious successor to take over the stable without having to procure Japanese Sumo Association elder stock (the 104 shares available to be in the sumo assocation leadership and be allowed to run or coach a sumo stable) as he is dai-yokozuna, meaning he is among the most successful of the retiring yokozuna. So he'd be offered the share on status alone.
Kakuryu isn't so lucky. His stablemaster, Michinoku Kazuhiro, won't turn 65 for another 4 years, isn't the more successful of the retiring yokozuna, and Kakuryu hasn't earned Japanese citizenship yet (he, like many top wrestlers, is Mongolian). To be allowed to have elder stock you must be a Japanese citizen, so if he retires or is forced to do so he cannot be offered or given stock, cannot run a stable, and doesn't have the opportunities that Hakuho would. Which would be a very sad state of affairs and an extreme waste of his talents and experience bringing up new generations of rikishi. If he is at least a Japanese citizen he can be on the sumo association council for 5 years while he waits for another elder to retire and get their stock.
Any particularly valid reasons for that, or is it just a longstanding tradition that nobody has bothered to really challenge yet? It seems pretty remarkably unfair from my outside perspective, especially considering, as you said, many of the top wrestlers are Mongolian.
p.s. Thanks for providing these little peaks into the world of Sumo. :)
There is a reason, the validity is up to each individual to decide. The reason is one Japan's favorite pastimes: xenophobia
It wasn't a rule until 1976 which is around the time that foreign born rikishi (namely Hawaiian born Takamiyama) began to appear in the top ranks and start winning. In 1968 Takamiyama was the first foreign born rikishi to reach the top division and in 1972 he was the first foreign born rikishi to win a tournament. He expressed interest in becoming and elder and in 1976 the JSA added the citizenship requirement. Takamiyama still became a citizen in 1980 and to continue his list of firsts, he was the first foreign born elder in 1984.
The Mongolians are feared across sumo because their upbringing in the tradition of the "Three Manly Disciplines" (wrestling, horsemanship, archery) are a deeply engrained part of their culture and they start all three at extremely young ages while most Japanese wrestlers don't begin training until their teens. Mongolians began arriving in sumo in the early 90's and have been dominant since nearly the beginning. In 2002 the sumo association implemented a rule that THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE (sorry, Highlander joke) foreign born rikishi per stable. Their argument was that "foreigners have difficulty adapting to Japanese customs", but the reality is that it's an attempt to keep a Japanese sport Japanese. I haven't done a count of all the current wrestlers (mostly because the SumoDB is down at the moment), but it's usually something like 6-7% of all wrestlers are foreign born, but of the 42 wrestlers in the top division eleven (26%) are foreign born (from Mongolia, Georgia, Bulgaria, and Brazil).
Wrestlers that were already part of a stable when the rule was implemented in 2002 were grandfathered in, but no more can be added to a stable until all foreign born wresters in that stable retire.
Happy to do so!
Oof. Yeah, 1976 is not a longstanding tradition at all, and that definitely seems to have been a pretty blatantly xenophobic reason to have implemented it. The rule about only so many foreigners allowed per stable is even more blatant too, IMO. Lame. :(
If your guess as to why Hakuho is also withdrawing from tournaments is true, that it is in part to protect Kakuryu's ability to become an elder, that's pretty cool though. Thanks for all the insight. :)
In post basho news, as predicted, both Hakuho and Kakuryu were given a ‘warning’ by the Yokozuna Deliberation Council.
The YDC has three levels it can use when unhappy with a yokozuna:
If it comes to that, does the retirement "recommendation" actually have any teeth? Or is this all just passive aggressive posturing on the council's part?
That gets into some weird Japanese sumo politics. A little history...
The Yokozuna Deliberation Council (YDC) was created in the 1950's in a response to the Japan Sumo Association (JSA) threatening to knock some Yokozuna that had missed a couple of bouts (not entire tournaments, just bouts) down to Ozeki. Up until that point the tradition of 'yokozuna can only retire' had stood, no yokozuna had been demoted, and no threats to do so were made.1 During this period in the 50's one yokozuna was injured and unable to compete and the other two had skipped days because they were at risk of having a losing tournament.2 The JSA was tired of the shenanigans and made the "I'll bust you down to ozeki so fast it'll make your head spin" threat and a post-WW2 Japan trying desperately to hold onto their traditions in the wake of massive westernization said "hold the frack up!" Even though the JSA threat was shelved, the external committee (the YDC) of sumo experts was set up in order to ensure only the most worthy candidates (namely ones who theoretically wouldn’t be continually absent) were promoted and as a response to a JSA that was seen to be overreaching its authority.
So now you have the JSA running the show and the YDC saying who should and shouldn't be promoted to the top spot of yokozuna along with being the body that has these three levels of warning and can reprimand/slap fines/pay cuts onto misbehaving yokozuna.3 The "rules" (again, unofficially official) for who gets a promotion to yokozuna are well known and haven't been altered (or ignored due to the aforementioned xenophobia) for many decades, so while the YDC will make the recommendation that a rikishi be promoted to yokozuna, by the time they do so it's already a given. So the YDC seems to just be a formality at that point, right? Being that this is Japan's oldest sport, the national sport, has been around for over a thousand years, 99.9% of the time everything is done by the book and no intervention is needed, but the YDC is there for that 0.1% when some Hatakikomi (sumo slap down winning technique) is necessary.
An "encouragement" statement is rare, a "warning" even more so, "retirement recommendation" pretty much would only happens if the yokozuna breaks Japanese law and/or if it was obvious they were going to retire anyway and even then is nearly unheard of because no yokozuna would want the dishonor and disrespect of being told to retire.
In a purely hypothetical situation of what is technically possible where a completely unorthodox and defiant yokozuna decides to call the YDC and JSA's bluff, says he cannot/will not compete, causing the YDC to issue a retirement recommendation, and the yokozuna refuses to do so, the YDC/JSA can dock all of his pay and the YDC can even throw their hands up and just tell the JSA "screw tradition, demote him". Once out of the top spot demotions continue until you're down in Jonokuchi, which is the lowest ranked division where the high school children compete. At that point your elder stock has been revoked, people on the street that would normally be falling over themselves to meet any professional sumo wrestler, let alone a yokozuna, won't even make eye contact with you, and who knows if you're even allowed to compete because there's a solid chance your disrespect has caused you to be kicked out of your sumo stable. All of this wouldn't happen, but ultimately the YDC most definitely has teeth, just a matter of if the yokozuna want to see if they'll bite.
1
There technically isn't a rule that says "Yokozuna can't be demoted" just the tradition that it is a highly honored position and so if you are a yokozuna and you can no longer perform to the standard then you should do the honorable thing and retire; no one wants to watch a has-been. Sumo has a lot of unofficial official rules and the culture doesn't really challenge them.
2
This still happens today with yokozuna suddenly having a suspicious injury or illness if they aren't winning; no one really buys it, but they also aren't going to call the yokozuna a liar.
3
Stoicism is the rule in all of sumo, if you lose you are expected to do so with unemotional grace. If you win, you are expected to do look like a statue of respect, etiquette, and manners. Yokozuna are held to the highest standard with near zero deviations from expectations. Hakuho was reprimanded and docked 10% of his pay for three months because he led/started a traditional Japanese cheer (sanbon-jime) from the ring at the end of his speech during the closing ceremonies of a tournament. This is already done at the end of the closing ceremony, but he did it early. Boom, reprimand.
Some leeway is given to lower ranked rikishi though, even more so in extreme situations and where handing down punishment for not adhering to etiquette would be a massive PR nightmare.4
4
A perfect example is from January of this year when Tokushoryu, the lowest ranked rikishi in the top division, won the tournament with a 14-1 record with an incredible 13 win streak after his college sumo mentor passed away during the tournament and straight up burst into tears in the ring. Warning, understandably emotional crying fat man may trigger feelings you didn't know you had. I appreciate when some emotion is shown after a tough bout and while not frequent it does happen and is allowed to slide, but I'd never want the extremes of NFL touchdown celebrations to be in sumo. A simple look of shock, relief, furrowed brow, or surprise is plenty.