[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

The Exiled Prince

Sumo is not just a sport - it’s a lifestyle. People say this about other sports, in a vague, metaphorical way - but for sumotori the lifestyle is physical, and comes with an all-day training schedule, a strict social hierarchy, and a lengthy list of prohibitions, regulations, and obligations. And it comes with a building, and a fixed group of one’s peers that serve as sparring partners, housemates, and friends. When a new recruit joins sumo, they are admitted not to the Japan Sumo Association at large, but to a specific stable, or heya, headed by a stablemaster, or oyakata, usually a retired high-ranking wrestler. The new rikishi then leaves their previous home and moves into the stable, where they will remain for the rest of their career. Their stablemates become their siblings, their oyakata not just a coach but a surrogate parent. This familial unit is metaphorical, but just barely - at least according to the matchmaking committee, which will only exempt a pair of wrestlers from fighting if they are brothers…or if they share a stable. For foreign-born wrestlers, who often speak no Japanese until they move to Japan for high school, joining sumo means leaving their previous lives thousands of miles behind to live with a group of stablemates who might be their only social connections of any kind in the country. So a heya is not just a family - in many cases, the emotional ties within a stable transcend the merely familial.

So when Terunofuji’s stablemaster, the former yokozuna Isegahama-oyakata, refused his request to retire, he did so not just as a coach and mentor but as the closest thing to a father the fallen ozeki had in Japan, his adopted homeland. What could he do but fight on?

Isegahama-oyakata had faith in his protege, even when Terunofuji’s self-belief was at its most fragile. He had witnessed the dizzying rise and catastrophic collapse of his previous star pupil, yokozuna Harumafuji, and was determined to forge a different path for Terunofuji. And he backed up this resolve with an approach to injury management that was novel in the sumo world. Because every bout missed due to injury is treated as a loss by the rankings committee, sumotori are heavily incentivized to return as quickly as possible, often fighting through pain to come back mid-basho and scrape together a bare handful of wins just to limit the extent of their fall. But this can be disastrous for the long-term health of the wrestler - Kisenosato’s defiant playoff win with an injured shoulder in March 2017 was the last strong performance of his career, and Terunofuji’s own resistance to absences had led to repeated reinjury with very little to show for it. So his stablemaster put his foot down, and insisted that this time, Terunofuji would sit out until his health problems were resolved, no matter how long it took and how precipitous a drop down the rankings it incited.

So Terunofuji’s long-suffering knees were subjected to one final surgery, and he sat out the next four tournaments in a row. And he fell. And fell and fell and fell and fell and fell and fell and fell. In just eight months of absence, he dropped from the second juryo division all the way to the fifth division, jonidan, the domain of underachieving career journeymen and 15-year old recruits with hair not yet long enough to style into the mandatory topknot.

And in sumo, a wrestler’s ranking determines not just their opponents on match day but their position within the social hierarchy of the sumo world as well, so this plunge into the abyss implied an endless parade of losses for the former ozeki. First, his salary - wrestlers at juryo level and above are paid for tournament participation, some quite generously…but those below are allotted only a meager living allowance, and are utterly dependent on their stables for room, board, and basic survival needs. This subservient position extends to intra-stable duties as well, as unsalaried wrestlers are expected to get up early every day to perform menial chores, while those in the top divisions are waited upon. Below the fourth sandanme division, even a wrestler’s dress code outside the ring is strictly regulated - they must wear only a yukata, a form of kimono so thin that it was originally used as a bathrobe, even during the harsh Japanese winter. Terunofuji had slowly accumulated these privileges over four years spent clawing his way to the top division, and another four grinding out his place among sumo’s elite. In just eight months, he had lost eight years of career progress.

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Two years after his cosmic heel turn, the fifth-division wrestler Terunofuji returned to the ring to face the teenagers. Gone was the cocky champion of old, his self-assurance replaced by thick layers of medical tape that swaddled both knees and wound its way halfway up his thighs. His strong upper body could still toss star-struck youngsters aside…but his technique was rusty, and his signature lifting power was nowhere to be found. Moreover, he had developed a serious weakness in the all-important pushing game, with his ailing knees no longer able to transmit the force needed to brace himself at the edge of the ring and withstand his opponents’ thrusts.

In a playoff for the fifth-division championship, he faced Roga, competing in his second professional tournament and just nine months removed from his high school graduation:

The confident rookie drove straight for the ligaments, shoving Terunofuji back onto the ringside straw bales almost immediately, then dropping him to the clay with an emphatic twist-down. This was the playbook for defeating the new Terunofuji - push him backwards as forcefully as possible, wrench his upper body away from his feet, and mercilessly exploit his weak point as efficiently as possible. If even a kid just one week into his twenties could execute on that gameplan, what hope did he realistically have against the mighty thrusts and cunning tactics of upper-division opponents?

[ljubljana]

But although Terunofuji would not be the jonidan champion, a playoff loss was still good for second place among the 200+ wrestlers in the division. That meant a massive promotion, from the middle of jonidan all the way up to…the middle of sandanme, the fourth-highest division. And as time went on, he gradually rounded back into something resembling his old form, and devised creative ways to compensate for his lack of knees. The reinvented Terunofuji was a grinding, defensive wrestler who aimed to survive his opponent’s charge, set his feet, and wear his foes out with a combination of size, endurance, and sheer upper body strength. If his legs could no longer be relied upon, he would protect them with his arms. To that end, he developed a new signature grip, a vicelike double-arm bar which, if executed quickly and with overwhelming power, could immobilize his opponent’s arms and prevent them from establishing the kind of belt grip by which Roga had manipulated him in their match. He could still be pushed out in the first few seconds, but if he remained standing after that, he tended to win, and in this way he amassed three consecutive one-loss finishes to take him to the 10th-highest rank in the third makushita division. The top of makushita is famous for a desperate intensity of competition, as hungry wrestlers vie for a chance to cross the most significant threshold in the sumo hierarchy. For promotion to the second juryo division means admission to the ranks of the sekitori, the elite group of wrestlers in the top two divisions who are actually paid a salary for competing in sumo tournaments!

Here is Terunofuji’s bid to regain his livelihood, in a final-day showdown with undefeated Tsushimanada for the makushita championship:

Tsushimanada ducks under the arm bar and goes for Roga’s double-handed inside belt grip, and for a moment he has it. But Terunofuji’s signature move has a devastating continuation, as with a slight flick of the elbow, his arm bar transmogrifies into a deep belt grip of his own. Tsushimanada loses one hand’s worth of purchase, and Terunofuji’s clamp at the shoulder gives him the leverage needed to wrench the other free as well. With the initial charge withstood and no remaining belt grips between them, the match devolves into a pure contest of upper body strength - which, of course, is all according to plan for the once-and-future sekitori.

Thus it was that Terunofuji advanced from the 48th rank in jonidan all the way to the salaried ranks in under a year. Terunofuji was speedrunning sumo. He combined his arsenal of new techniques with the steely resolve of someone playing with house money. The old Terunofuji crumpled under pressure, and was famous for having never won a playoff match in his career. But this reborn wrestler would be retired if not for the intervention of his stablemaster - so why fight like he had anything left to lose?

In March 2020, a 10-5 record from juryo 3 proved just barely sufficient to actualize the implausible dream of a top-division return. Terunofuji would be ranked at maegashira 17, at the very bottom of the makuuchi division, a rank so low that, when the fixed size of the division and the variable number of ozeki and yokozuna intersected in just the right way, it sometimes didn’t even exist. But he was back.

Just days later, COVID-19 shut down the world.

[ljubljana]

For the first time since the 2011 match-fixing scandal but to the surprise of no one, the May tournament was cancelled as sumo elders desperately tried to work out how, if at all, they could safely and ethically continue to hold sporting events in which two men clad only in loincloths engage in prolonged physical contact while breathing heavily in one another’s faces. Flush with triumph over grave adversity, Terunofuji would return in July to a staggering sumo world in a crisis with existential stakes. The basic traditions and ornamentations of sumo continued, but the densely-packed and often raucous crowds were gone, replaced by a ghastly silence. As the yobidashi sang out each wrestler’s name, a pale echo answered back from somewhere amongst Hakuho’s innumerable championship banners that adorned the rafters of the empty arena. The next two weeks would go down in history as the “ghost basho”.

In the two years since Terunofuji ruled the top division, sweeping, generational change had left it almost unrecognizable. At the dawning of the Year of the Henka, Terunofuji’s fellow ozeki were three: Kisenosato, Goeido, and Kotoshogiku, veterans of countless battles each more grizzled than the last. All three were gone now. Even their successors were gone - Takayasu and Tochinoshin had both ascended to the rank and suffered demotion due to injury during Terunofuji’s long exile, though these two still clung desperately to their salaries by fighting on amidst the maegashira. Yokozuna Harumafuji had disappeared as well after he shocked the world by wreaking physical violence upon a lower-ranked stablemate. Hakuho remained, but his era of preeminence was fading, his twelve-year procession of victories now punctuated by six-month leaves of absence to reconstitute his knees. In the vacuum left by the declining old guard, new challengers emerged from their shadows, and something unseen since before the days of Asashoryu became commonplace. Sekiwake, komusubi, and even rank-and-file maegashira started actually winning tournaments.

Among this latter group was one of sumo’s rare, true rising stars, who by virtue of his seven college-level titles had been given special dispensation to start his career in the fourth sandanme division, and who less than two years later was earning double-digit winning records as a maegashira. He became known for a devastating right-hand inside grip and a joyful expressiveness on and off the ring, after both victories and defeats, as though he just couldn’t believe he was actually being paid to do sumo. He seemed thrilled just to be there, regardless of the results…and pretty quickly, he started to get results. In May 2019, he rode a Hakuho absence to a 12-win tournament victory from the unheard-of rank of maegashira 8, catapulting him to within spitting distance of the named ranks. Starting in September, he won 10, 11, 10, and 11 matches in four successive tournaments - not quite the 33-in-3 typically needed for ozeki promotion, but close enough that a fourth double-digit tournament, coupled with his prior championship, was enough to put him over the top. The star-crossed ghost basho would mark his debut at Terunofuji’s former rank:

Ozeki ASANOYAMA

The July 2020 tournament was the first in some time in which both remaining yokozuna began the basho healthy, and there was great optimism that this basho would mark a return to form for the grand champions rather than some kind of metaphorical changing of the guard. This hope lasted for about the first six hours, until yokozuna Kakuryu, the last of Terunofuji’s old compatriots at the top save the indefatigable Hakuho, suffered an elbow injury in a loss to Endo that you may remember. This would be the yokozuna’s final match - he would miss the next three tournaments, meeting increasingly stern warnings from the Yokozuna Deliberation Council with increasingly implausible claims that the next basho would mark his triumphant return. But after reinjuring first his lower back, then his leg, just in the course of training, the 36-year old Kakuryu finally bowed to reality and retired in March of 2021.

But anticipation of a yokozuna resurgence was only half misplaced, as from day 2 onwards, the ghost basho became the Hakuho Show. The great yokozuna was in fine form, and spent the first week crushing all comers en route to a torrid 8-0 first-half record.

Both Asanoyama and Terunofuji were spared an early match with the undefeated Hakuho - Asanoyama because his rank was too high, as ozeki-yokozuna matches are typically saved for the final few days in the interest of drama, and Terunofuji because his rank was too low, as the roster of opponents for a typical maegashira 17 typically contains only other wrestlers from the bottom half of the division. So Asanoyama and Terunofuji racked up lengthy undefeated streaks along parallel tracks, facing totally disjoint sets of opponents. Asanoyama defeated both komusubi and seven top-ranked maegashira before finally losing to sekiwake Mitakeumi. Meanwhile, Terunofuji beat the top-ranked juryo wrestler and eight rikishi with ranks at or below maegashira 12, with his only loss coming to maegashira 13 (and former ozeki) Takayasu. After day 10, both wrestlers were 9-1, just one win shy of Hakuho’s pace.

The next afternoon, after obliterating one komusubi and nine upper maegashira, Hakuho began his bi-monthly tour of the named ranks, starting with the other komusubi and working his way up through the sekiwake, and finally to the ozeki at the end of the tournament. In his prime, Hakuho would typically remain unchallenged until the last few days of this process, when he would face other strong yokozuna such as Asashoryu or Harumafuji. But this was 2020, and on day 11, Hakuho suffered his first loss, to hard-charging pusher-thruster Daieisho. His next match, on day 12, was against perennial sekiwake Mitakeumi, who had notched two tournament wins over his career but had repeatedly come up just shy of the elusive ozeki promotion:

One awkward landing, and Hakuho was out for the tournament with an aggravated knee injury, and the leaderboard was blasted open. Asanoyama and Terunofuji had both won their matches since day 10 to advance into the rarefied double-digit win territory.

[ljubljana]

With Hakuho gone, the scheduling committee realized with a start that his years of dominance had papered over a stark flaw in their matchmaking system. Because each wrestler typically faced only those of a similar rank, but the overall tournament winner was determined by numerical win-loss record alone, a sufficiently strong lower-maegashira, such as, say, maegashira 17 Terunofuji, could feast on journeymen and recent promotees, race out to a stellar record, and come within striking distance of the championship without ever facing the top wrestlers in the named ranks. On day 13, the committee saw this scenario looming large before them and freaked out, marching Terunofuji from an easy win over a maegashira 9 all the way up to the tournament-leading, 11-1 ozeki Asanoyama. The freshly-minted ozeki faced the oldest of the old ozeki, back from the dead and boasting a startling 11-1 record to match his own, in their first ever career bout. The victor would gain sole possession of the lead.

[ljubljana]

Terunofuji rode this momentum into a day 14 match with sekiwake Shodai. A perennial mid-maegashira until recently, Shodai had spent the four-month hiatus from official sumo activity rethinking his often-criticized approach to the initial charge. He had come back transformed, supplementing his ballerina-like ability to cheat certain death by a graceful twirl at ring’s edge with a shockingly aggressive tachiai that combined his go-to grappling techniques with the speed and momentum of a pushing specialist.

Terunofuji’s newfound weaknesses were mercilessly attacked, and his surgically-repaired knees could not stop Shodai’s charge. He was blasted out of the ring and landed hard and with an ominous leg twist.

[ljubljana]

This gave Asanoyama an opening to erase his one-win deficit and regain a share of the lead. Unlike Terunofuji, the ozeki had already faced most top-rankers in his earlier matches, and with Hakuho’s withdrawal nixing their planned face-off, the schedulers had to dig down deep to find him an opponent on day 14. This produced maegashira 7 Terutsuyoshi, Asanoyama’s lowest-ranked opponent of the basho, a small and agile rikishi known mostly for throwing a huge chunk of purifying salt into the ring during the pre-bout ritual in lieu of the customary pinch. A win for Terutsuyoshi would be his eighth, guaranteeing a winning record in the tournament and promotion in the rankings; a win for Asanoyama would leave him a huge favorite to win the title.

Terutsuyoshi reached into his bag of tricks, and pulled out a leg pick! And that, my friends, is how a five-foot-seven rikishi can compete at the highest level in a sport with no weight classes

[ljubljana]

The final day came, with the champion yet-undetermined. At 12-2, Terunofuji’s match with the 11-3 Mitakeumi, slayer of both Asanoyama and Hakuho, would be determinative. A loss for Terunofuji would grant 11-3 Asanoyama the chance to force a three-way playoff by beating Shodai in the last match of the day. A win would clinch the title.

In front of no one but the officials, the camera crews, and the tiny sliver of widely-spaced attendees allowed in after the first few days, Terunofuji capped a magnificent comeback by tying the record for the lowest-ranked wrestler ever to win a top-division title. A maegashira 17 championship! Somewhere in his palatial residence in Ulaanbaatar, Asashoryu was rolling over in his sleep. Terunofuji had faced only three wrestlers in the top half of the division, and zero yokozuna, but frankly, who cared - the fallen warrior had returned in triumph, defiant and unbroken! And if this title was indeed a fluke, we would soon find out. For with his win came a 16-rung kiss of death of a promotion, all the way to maegashira 1, a rank at which he would almost certainly face every ozeki and yokozuna in just the first week…

(This tournament recap unofficially sponsored by Jason’s All-Sumo Channel, without which I would not have embeddable footage of, um, literally any of the bouts above. Following sumo from outside Japan can sometimes be a little…difficult )

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On day 11 of the May 2021 tournament, the Shukan Bunshun magazine reported that ozeki Asanoyama had visited nightclubs on ten different occasions during and prior to the basho, in violation of the Japan Sumo Association’s strict COVID-19 prevention protocols. If he had been forthcoming about his guilt, perhaps he would have been shown leniency - instead, he conspired with a reporter to destroy evidence relating to the outings, a cover-up seen by many as more serious than the crime due to the high standard of ethical conduct expected of a holder of sumo’s second-highest rank. Such a public breach of integrity was unthinkable for an ozeki, and when the full truth surfaced, the sumo commentariat expected a forced retirement, like that of Asashoryu a decade before.

In the end, Asanoyama was sentenced to a six-tournament suspension from competition, with his pay reduced by 50% and his signed retirement papers held over his head by the JSA in case of further misconduct. And, by now, you can probably guess how the rankings committee treats a disciplinary absence from competition. When the exiled prince returned to the ring, he would be in the fourth division, sandanme, with a mountain of regrets at his back and an arduous climb before him which, in the thousand-year history of sumo, had been conquered by a former ozeki only once before…

(errata)

(to be continued)

[ljubljana]

Turn 35 - Japan

[ljubljana]

oops hexadecimal post

[ljubljana]

Turn 36 - Japan

uhhhh guys



thrawn captures a second city-state! so that answers why they took so long to take the first one - they sent their first longships over to krill's CS to time their attacks to hit both at the same time. nice! we arguably should have done the same, if moga didn't seem too valuable to eat. as it stands though, we are now WAY behind.

in fact, the whole world is way behind. i don't know what's going on in the halls of power everywhere else, but this HAS to collectively wake us all up. thrawn/krill now have SEVEN cities to everyone else's FOUR (krill founded this turn as well), and have better expansion prospects than the rest of us as well since the longships give them easy access to the rest of the CS, AND i'm guessing they're less than 10 turns from shipbuilding and ocean travel. pretty much as expected from the setup screen, an aggressive longship spam plan means norway JUST runs away with the game in the first 60 turns - barring a coordinated international response starting immediately, right now, and involving everyone building actual ships, this thing is already looking pretty over

also, they are back to first in dom rankings even though some of their ships are presumably still healing from their conquests, indicating no slowdown on ship production. possibly thrawn will see fit to go for two settlers next, since they just discovered two civics as well lmao, one of which must be EE due to the lack of districts. but if they do that, it will only be because they feel it will yield more total longships on the game-determinative set of turns. and they might not even bother if they feel the game-determinative turns will be turns 50-60, which is plausible!

so what do we, japan and portugal, do to help the global coalition here? spam ships immediately, or continue with our plan of domestic economic development and then spam ships? my military plan post-religion was essentially this: shrines asap, then the trader in hakuho so teru can hit size 4, then GP, then keep one city on galleys at all times (moving victor around to promote them all) while the rest work on building our production capacity. but perhaps that will be too little, too late? i'm really not sure, and am curious to hear other opinions here.

ok, freakout #1 out of the way, here's the update on the religious race...



...no projects from chev, which means either that their capital is size 2 and incapable of 3-turning a project (more likely) or that they built something else instead (less likely). and it means they did not chop at the capital, so the "two chops at the capital" plan is now probably out as they'd now have to chop on consecutive turns. they COULD still beat us if they chopped at the second city this turn though and it wasn't quite enough to finish the first project. in that case, i believe they can still win with a t38 chop at either city.

i do need to make sure discovering craftsmanship and pottery won't escalate the cost of projects already in production. we SHOULD be fine even if it does, as hakuho is at 34/42 and the cost would go up to 46, but somehow i am still nervous about it

TAD is in a hot war with the barbs up north...



i am pretty scared that they might rush south and go for TAD's trader this turn  hopefully the barbs will attack the Portuguese ships that are literally right in front of them and not a) magically know where the trader is because of AI omniscience and b) immediately run towards it.

for my part i should have this camp cleared in the early t40s, barring a quad spawn. thank goodness as we are getting to the critical point re scouting...

oh and i finally zoomed out



great news for TAD's traders! but does this mean we should scout north and northwest, or west and east? the players could be arranged in roughly a square, or roughly a diamond, which would probably both make for interesting geopolitical dynamics. i will probably send my first scout roughly NW as we have the furthest distance to go to reach a player in that direction. but i will start a ship heading straight west ASAP as well, as 96/6 = 16 turns for circumnavigation if we both head straight west and straight east, respectively, under ideal circumstances with zero obstacles in the way. which means we need to start now, now, right now if we want a realistic shot at it before the era change...

i think that has to be the unpromoted ship though, even though it means a 3t delay  the embolon one is colossally valuable now with 42 strength vs enemy galleys, and probably needs to stay nearby as the nucleus of a homeland defense force...

misc foreign policy:

- krill picks up an era score, likely from founding, and NINE empire score, which is way more than just a city settle. did they make a district too, or get double pop growths? i think it can't be the latter as their capital just regrew...right?

- inc gets a civic and empire score

- chevalier mysteriously picks up 3 era score! wtf, from where? can't be a natural wonder as inc would have earned ES as well, plus they have no boats so how would they have found one? can't be contacts either for the same reason. can't be a +3 district as they should have earned it last turn, if it was the HS, and their cities are way too small for a second district anywhere. could it be a first boat for +2 plus something else? seems a little unlikely since i can't think of where the +1 could be from either.... but if they did build a boat this race is overrr

edit: chev's ES is a camp clear, of course. it had better not respawn next to me WHILE i'm dealing with this one i think a camp can't spawn within 7 tiles of an existing one or 3 tiles of a city, but annoyingly that does leave a significant fraction of my island still eligible...

edit2: scouting observation - with 8 players, 16 CS total, and 8 home CS, the other CS can NOT be exclusively at the midpoints between each pair of players as 4 choose 2 = only 6 such pairs. so something else is going on here. perhaps one at each of the "close" midpoints of the possible square arrangement, then two at each of the "long" midpoints in the center of the square (and its antipode)? if it is a square we want 5 scouting ships out ASAP - one west, one NW, one N, one NE, and one E...