[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

The Enigma

The September 2020 tournament was my first basho, and its events, narratives, and eventual champion will always hold a place of some pre-eminence in my dumb, sentimental, secret-romantic heart. My immediate social circle and I had all been trapped together inside a big house in Pittsburgh for six months, and between my first tentative turns in PBEM19, I bounced from one micro-obsession to another in an attempt to salve the existential dread and deep loneliness of the moment. Realms Beyond and sumo were the two that stuck, and while I initially held some reservations about combining the two (really, the westerner went with a sumo naming scheme as Japan?), in the end my noxious craving for poetic symmetry proved too much for my lizard brain to resist. So here it is, my love letter to sumo - I hope it’s not too self-indulgent

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Like everyone else in the top division, the yokozuna and ozeki must face 15 other rikishi over the course of a basho. Because there are no wrestlers above them in the rankings, all their matches must come against lower-ranked rikishi, so the scheduling committee does the best it can and pairs the yokozuna with the 15 highest-ranked opponents, which consists of all wrestlers in the named ranks, which typically number between six and twelve, and the upper maegashira down to about maegashira 4. The sekiwake and komusubi are themselves close enough to the top that they actually face the same problem - they too need to face 15 opponents, and since the yokozuna and ozeki must face them to round out their own slates, they usually end up paired with the 15 top-ranked opponents as well.

By symmetry, this presents a terrifying conundrum for those lucky maegashira just below the named ranks, in the so-called joi-jin. A rikishi who is promoted from maegashira 6 to maegashira 3 will typically go from facing zero members of the named ranks to facing all of them. And because dramatic tension demands that matches within the named ranks be saved for the end..a maegashira 1 can expect to be fed to all the yokozuna and ozeki, one after another, in just the first week before being granted even a single bout against another member of the joi-jin. By that point, newcomers to this crucible are often so demoralized that they drop those matches, too, and the upper maegashira and komusubi ranks are notoriously difficult to retain, and produce more hideous 3-12 and 2-13 scores than almost anywhere else.

So unlike last tournament, where Terunofuji’s record was padded with easy matches against foes struggling just to stay in the top division, this time ozeki Asanoyama and the new maegashira 1 would face identical opponents in a much more objective test of relative sporting merit. And beginning on opening day, they had one other thing in common - they were getting their butts kicked. Last time, Terunofuji’s first two victims were maegashira 17 Kotoyuki and maegashira 16 Kotoeko - this month, he had ozeki Takakeisho and sekiwake Mitakeumi, the two most fearsome pusher-thrusters in the division, whose entire brand of sumo was built around ending matches with overwhelmingly powerful shoves in the first five seconds, when Terunofuji was weakest. And Asanoyama looked very out of sorts in two upset losses to komusubi Endo and maegashira 1 Takanosho, sparking hushed whispers of some kind of concealed injury.

In their last face-off, Asanoyama and Terunofuji were fighting for pole position in a championship race; on day 3 of September, they just wanted their first win.

For the first and definitely not the last time, the English-language sumo commentators informed me that a 0-3 ozeki was “underachieving”. His strong record in July guaranteed him immunity from demotion, even if he went 0-15…but not from the scorn of sumo elders and the sumo media, who are rarely more unstinting in criticism than when they feel a rikishi is being propped up by the system at a rank that their performance doesn’t deserve.

And so it was with the yokozuna. A maegashira 1 almost never escapes the first three days without being devoured by a slavering grand champion; Terunofuji was spared only because the entire division was, with both Hakuho and Kakuryu out from day 1 to nurse the injuries they had reopened in July. Grim portents indeed for a pair of 35-year olds who had finished just two basho between them since the start of the year. Even Kakuryu’s own stablemaster publicly speculated about imminent retirement, and the inconstancy of the ozeki suggested the dawning of a whole era with no yokozuna. That had not happened since Terunofuji’s coach was a wrestler, when the former ozeki himself was less than two years old.

[ljubljana]

Naturally, as a new sumo fan, I knew exactly nothing about these overarching narratives when I was dropped into the September basho. So how does someone get into sumo without following the storylines? The technical side of the sport can be forbiddingly unapproachable for a layperson; most matches are over so quickly that individual moves are tough to pick out even with commentator assistance, and the winning techniques are ubiquitously referred to by intimidating Japanese names like uwatedashinage (a “pulling overarm throw”) and okurihikiotoshi (a “rear pull down”). My solution was to pick a few recognizable rikishi and latch on to their bouts, in the hope that in doing so I’d eventually bootstrap some knowledge of their favorite moves and opponents as well. But with both yokozuna out, which wrestlers were sufficiently distinctive to fill this role?

The canonical answer in the top division at this time was Enho, a hand-picked protege of yokozuna Hakuho who frequently tops fan polls of the, um, most aesthetically appealing rikishi. At 5’6'' and just 214 pounds, almost all of it muscle, he made Terutsuyoshi look like Terunofuji. Hakuho was somewhat notorious even before his coaching days for recruiting wrestlers of unusual size, and many of his pupils redefine one-dimensional dependency on either agility and technical skill, like Enho and stablemate Ishiura, or on the sheer size and strength of one’s overpowering frame, like 6’7'' rising star Hokuseiho. But Enho was in a class of his own, and was only made eligible to enter sumo in the first place when height requirements were relaxed after amateur champion Mainoumi underwent a painful surgical procedure to clear the previous bar (and trust me, you don't want to look that one up).

His day 7 match carried an unlikely historical significance that was utterly lost on me at the time. It came against a maegashira 11 who had missed the last four days due to injury, and had returned sooner than might have been medically advisable in a desperate attempt to stave off demotion to juryo:

Here we see some of the inherent dangers of over-reliance on agility to defeat larger foes. Enho ducks under Kotoshogiku’s charge and is rewarded with a deep belt grip…and an opponent, who outweighs him by almost 200 pounds, that is practically on top of him. His positioning undermined, when Enho goes for the throw, all Kotoshogiku has to do is lean on him with his full weight to grind him into the dust. And, in his injured state, that was just about all Kotoshogiku could do - this win would turn out to be the old lion’s last ever in the top division. He would drop to juryo 3 in November, where he would retire mid-tournament when he lost six of his first seven matches in the second division.

[ljubljana]

At 1-6, Enho had not opened well either. On day 9, he faced Ichinojo, the largest wrestler in the top division and a former sekiwake who was returning from juryo after a long injury-related layoff.

With this electrifying win, Enho started to turn his tournament around, and would finish with an almost-respectable 6-9 record. But while that was enough to spare the maegashira 9 from demotion, it did not quell speculation that his top-division competition had started to “figure him out”, so to speak. Perhaps there was a limit, after all, to just how undersized a rikishi can be and still survive in the cutthroat environment of makuuchi.

[ljubljana]

So who was doing well? Around the midway point of a tournament, sample size effects start to revert to the mean, and the leaderboard begins to congeal. More often than not over the past 20 years, this has meant one undefeated yokozuna, usually Hakuho or Asashoryu, a handful of also-rans from the named ranks one or two wins behind, and a foregone conclusion of a championship race. But with both yokozuna absent and a yawning void at the top, the prophesied era of parity had begun to sculpt the shape of the leaderboards as well. After day 10, this one saw no fewer than 5 rikishi with a share of the lead, for which an 8-2 record apparently sufficed nowadays. With no preordained favorites, the top division seemed to devolve into a series of round-robin sub-tournaments among different regions of the rankings chart, each yielding its own putative title contender. These were:

Ozeki Takakeisho, sumo’s premier pushing specialist, who at just 24 was the youngest plausible yokozuna candidate in some time - if he could avoid injury.

Sekiwake Shodai, who won 11 matches in July, a former mid-level maegashira having a banner year and boasting a reinvented initial charge and an unnatural ability to steal matches with a last-second ringside pirouette.

Maegashira 8 Wakatakakage, the youngest and most successful of sumo’s three Onami brothers. Wakatakakage, Wakamotoharu, and Wakatakamoto derive their shikona, or ring names, from Takakage, Motoharu, and Takamoto, three brothers from a sengoku-era Japanese parable - the “waka” prefix here meaning “young”, which at this point was still more-or-less accurate.

Maegashira 9 Onosho, a powerful pusher-thruster who is often on the cusp of greatness, only to be let down by suspect forward balance. His intense frenemy-ship with Takakeisho dates all the way back to their days as elementary school rivals.

Maegashira 14 Tobizaru, a top-division debutant. Most rikisihi have their shikona chosen by their stablemaster, but Tobizaru is the rare exception who picked his own - its literal translation of “Flying Monkey” is highly appropriate for his frenetic style of sumo.

The 3-loss group, still mathematically in contention, was much less muddled, but no less surprising - it was exactly Terunofuji and Asanoyama! Improbably, their grim desperation match on day 3 had sparked a turnaround for both rikishi, who had lost just one match between them since then. With 5 wrestlers ahead of them, the permutations required for either to claim the title were forbidding indeed - but that they still existed at all was something to be proud of.

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It fell to the scheduling committee to avert the twin specters of a mid-maegashira championship and a five-way playoff. In the final five days, the tiered, round robin-like matchmaking system began to dissolve into single-elimination, as the schedulers methodically whittled down the championship contenders, one by one.

Thus, Tobizaru faced Onosho on day 11:

Onosho’s thrusts struggle to find purchase against the ducks and weaves of the Feisty Primate. As his attacker begins to tire, Tobizaru spots an opening to pounce on Onosho’s fatal flaw - his center of mass is too far forwards. With a quick leftward dodge, Tobizaru is behind him, and lands a slap-down, the traditional bane of an overeager pusher-thruster.

[ljubljana]

This dropped Onosho to 8-3, and into the waiting arms of Terunofuji on day 12:

Something seems off in Onosho’s pushing game, as he can’t move even the kneeless Terunofuji backwards at all. He switches to the backup plan, an uncharacteristic belt grip…which invites the double arm-lock of death from Terunofuji. But, unusually, Terunofuji can’t break Onosho's hold, and with both hands inside, Onosho suddenly has the leverage to force Terunofuji backwards with a grapple instead of a shove. And at the edge, he uncorks a devastating throw!

It turned out that there was a good reason for the failure of Terunofuji’s signature move - after this defeat, he withdrew from the tournament with a left knee injury. He had fought through pain to reach the all-important 8th win, with its guarantee of a winning record and repromotion from maegashira 1 to the named ranks. But the new Terunofuji knew well the potential cost of pushing his body any further than that. His tactical retreat produced a final record of 8-7, which was not world-beating - but he had contended, if briefly, and he had survived. Securing the future could be glorious, too.

[ljubljana]

Meanwhile, the merciless schedulers decreed that, as of this day, there could be but one energetic top-division newcomer in the makuuchi title race, as Tobizaru (left) faced Wakatakakage (right):

Here we see illustrated the dichotomy of the henka. Terunofuji used it to end an ozeki’s career, and received 5 years of condemnation. But when 5’9” maegashira 14 Tobizaru leverages a sideways jump at the initial charge to extend an underdog championship push, it is treated as an almost standard, if vaguely distasteful, part of the energetic rikishi’s repertoire.

[ljubljana]

The excitement of the sumo world, which loves an underdog challenger almost as much as it does a dominant grand champion, was becoming feverish. Tobizaru had slain both maegashira title contenders, and was 10-2! And this was no Terunofuji, a former superstar returning from a lengthy sabbatical - the Soaring Simian was at his highest-ever rank, and had spent the last three years fighting for survival in juryo. Despite his youthful exuberance, he was actually 28 already, and at this point an unlikely pick for a noteworthy career. Yet here he was, tied with Shodai and Takakeisho! And those two faced each other on day 13, so if Tobizaru could string together a third upset win over maegashira 1 Takanosho, he would win a full 50% share of the lead.

Bravo, Tobizaru

[ljubljana]

Since the lower-ranked Tobizaru fought earlier in the day, he was the first to reach 11 wins, and spent a full 30 minutes basking in the glow of a straight-up championship lead in the top division. Then, the Acrobatic Ape watched Shodai and Takakeisho fight over who got to be fed to him:

Takakeisho, when he is on his game, has a forward charge so powerful that it looks like a train. Densha-michi, the platonic ideal of pusher-thruster sumo, literally means “railroad tracks” and describes a scenario in which the pusher charges, blasts their foe back, and takes them straight out of the ring without decelerating for even a step. Takakeisho is a master practitioner of this, and any top-division pusher can emulate its form on a good day.

But what separates a great, ozeki-caliber pusher-thruster from a maegashira 9 is actually the backup plan. When a foe is too large or too well-positioned to force backwards, as Shodai is here, Takakeisho will maintain the assault, crashing his arms into his opponent one after another like waves on a beach, while he waits for an opening. Then, with shocking swiftness, he will jump to the side and win with a pivot and a slap-down.

He tries that here about two seconds into the match, after Shodai stops his charge. But the sekiwake deflects the downward blow with his left leg and keeps moving forward. What then? For Takakeisho, already starting to tire at this point, the answer is increasing desperation, and his frantic shoves finally force Shodai to the edge. But Shodai grabs a wild arm, dodges to the side, and yanks down to let Takakeisho’s own momentum carry him to its logical conclusion. And Shodai is 11-2.

[ljubljana]

On day 14, Tobizaru gets the Terunofuji treatment. For his first match ever against a member of the named ranks, the schedulers don’t hold back. He gets Takakeisho.

Incredibly, Tobizaru deflects the ozeki’s thrusts, and even forces him backwards! But then he overextends, and Takakeisho shows him how he became an ozeki. There it is - the backup plan.

[ljubljana]

Tobizaru drops to 11-3 and into a tie with Takakeisho…and Asanoyama, who has somehow won ten matches in a row (including two default wins over opponents who pulled out just before match day) to advance all the way to Shodai’s doorstep.

(to be continued...on the next page)