Category Archives: sumo

I know that very few of my readers have any interest in sumo, but this is a major story in Japan. The leader of the top stable of sumo wrestlers has died, and the story in the Japan Times explains a lot about the lineage that I was hazy about.

Sumo elder Futagoyama, a former ozeki and the father of former grand champions Takanohana and Wakanohana, died of mouth cancer at a Tokyo hospital Monday, his family said. He was 55.

Futagoyama, whose real name is Mitsuru Hanada [and whose sons first fought under the names Wakahanada and Takahanada], had been receiving treatment at a hospital in Tokyo since the fall of 2003 for a type of cancer that afflicts the region between the tongue and gums at the base of the mouth.

A native of Aomori Prefecture and younger brother of former yokozuna Wakanohana [a childhood favorite of mine], Futagoyama made his debut in professional sumo in July 1965 and earned promotion to the elite makuuchi division as an 18-year-old.

Nicknamed “Prince of Sumo,” Futagoyama quickly made his mark in the top flight as Takanohana and was promoted to ozeki, one below sumo’s highest rank of yokozuna, in the fall of 1972. He remained an ozeki for 50 tournaments until he retired in January 1981, the longest stint ever in the sport’s second-highest rank, and won two tournaments in the top division — both in 1975.

So, the recently retired brothers Wakanohana and Takanohana are the sons of the original Wakanohana, whose younger brother, retired ozeki Takanohana, ended up as their stablemaster. And now the recently retired Wakanohana’s younger brother Takanohana (not my favorite) assumes control of sumo’s leading Futagoyama [‘Twin (lit. ‘two child’) Mountain’] Beya.

The incentive scheme that rules sumo is intricate and extraordinarily powerful. Each wrestler maintains a ranking that affects every slice of his life: how much money he makes, how large an entourage he carries, how much he gets to eat, sleep, and otherwise take advantage of his success. The sixty-six highest-ranked wrestlers in Japan, comprising the makuuchi and juryo divisions, make up the sumo elite. A wrestler near the top of this elite pyramid may earn millions and is treated like royalty. Any wrestler in the top forty earns at least $170,000 a year. The seventieth-ranked wrestler in Japan, meanwhile, earns only $15,000 a year. Life isn’t very sweet outside the elite. Low-ranked wrestlers must tend to their superiors, preparing their meals and cleaning their quarters and even soaping up their hardest-to-reach body parts. So ranking is everything.

A wrestler’s ranking is based on his performance in the elite tournaments that are held six times a year. Each wrestler has fifteen bouts per tournament, one per day over fifteen consecutive days. If he finishes the tournament with a winning record (eight victories or better), his ranking will rise. If he has a losing record, his ranking falls. If it falls far enough, he is booted from the elite rank entirely. The eighth victory in any tournament is therefore critical, the difference between promotion and demotion; it is roughly four times as valuable in the rankings as the typical victory.

So a wrestler entering the final day of a tournament on the bubble, with a 7-7 record, has far more to gain from a victory than an opponent with a record of 8-6 has to lose.

SOURCE: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, pp. 40-44

Levitt compiles statistics that very strongly suggest that better opponents who have winning records (8-6 or 9-5) but are not in contention on the final day must have powerful (hidden) incentives to throw their bouts in order to give the 7-7 rikishi winning records of 8-7.

So, I thought I’d test that prediction against the recently completed Natsu Basho. Sure enough, on Day 14, there were 5 low-ranking (M = maegashira) rikishi with records of 7-7. And on the final day, as Freakonomics would predict, every single one of them ended up with a winning record of 8-7:

• Miyabiyama (M3) over Tamanoshima (M1, 5-10);
• Hokutoriki (M6) over Buyuzan (M12, 6-9);
• Kotonowaka (M8) over Kyokutenho (M3, 6-9);
• Aminishiki (M11) over Takekaze (M15, 9-6);
• Tokitenku (M15) over Asasekiryu (M8, 8-7).

Chances are better than even that any 7-7 rikishi will beat any rikishi with a losing record, as in the first three bouts listed. Only the last two bouts conform to the statistical pattern of Freakonomics, where 7-7 wrestlers have a record of beating 8-6 wrestlers 80% of the time on the final day, and 9-6 wrestlers almost 75% of the time on the last day, when their predicted odds would be a little under 50%.

But another factor enters into the bouts listed above. In every case except Hokutoriki (M6) over Buyuzan (M12), either a lower-ranking rikishi upset a higher-ranking one, or a rikishi with a worse record upset one with a better record. Relative rank isn’t covered by Freakonomics. But the possibility of corruption is.

Several years ago, two former sumo wrestlers came forward with extensive allegations of match rigging–and more. Aside from the crooked matches, they said, sumo was rife with drug use and sexcapades, bribes and tax evasion, and close ties to the yakuza, the Japanese mafia. The two men began to receive threatening phone calls; one of them told friends he was afraid he would be killed by the yakuza. Still, they went forward with plans to hold a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Tokyo. But shortly beforehand, the two men died–hours apart, in the same hospital, of a similar respiratory ailment. The police declared there had been no foul play but did not conduct an investigation. “It seems very strange for these two people to die on the same day at the same hospital,” said Mitsuru Miyake, the editor of a sumo magazine. “But no one has seen them poisoned, so you can’t prove the skepticism.”

Whether or not their deaths were intentional, these two men had done what no other sumo insider had previously done: named names. Of the 281 wrestlers covered in the data cited above, they identified 29 crooked wrestlers and 11 who were said to be incorruptible.

What happens when the whistle-blowers’ corroborating evidence is factored into the analysis of the match data? In matches between two supposedly corrupt wrestlers, the wrestler who was on the bubble won about 80 percent of the time. In bubble matches against a supposedly clean opponent, meanwhile, the bubble wrestler was no more likely to win than his record would predict. Furthermore, when a supposedly corrupt wrestler faced an opponent whom the whistle-blowers did not name as either corrupt or clean, the results were nearly as skewed as when two corrupt wrestlers met–suggesting that most wrestlers who weren’t specifically named were also corrupt.

For more on Freakonomics, see the authors’ blog, and the Stephen Levitt seminar hosted at Crooked Timber.

UPDATE: Tom of That’s News to Me, who’s far more conversant about sumo than I am (and who’s just finishing up law school at the U. of Chicago), left an interesting comment:

I think there are a couple reasons Levitt doesn’t mention that can help explain what’s going on. First off, it could just be something as simple as comparative advantage; if the 7-7 rikishi has a strong tachiai, then match him up on Day 15 with someone who’s not very good at tachiai defense. Second, I don’t know that he gets the individual incentives quite right; the biggest marginal difference on Day 15 is a shot at the yusho or not, but that’s relatively uncommon. The biggest recurring marginal difference is that between 8-7 and 7-8, so in a world strongly controlled by shared norms, we would expect to see something like this take place pretty consistently even without any other contact between the parties. Personally, I think this reason is alone in and of itself sufficient to explain everything we see that’s going on, at least w/r/t 7-7’s on Day 15. The sophisticated question, I think, is how much the Kyokai discounts the effects of the 8-7, W on Day 15 in doing the rankings, and, maybe more importantly, of the rikishi who took a dive to finish at 5-10 instead of maybe 6-9, and how he did relative to other 6-9’s/5-10’s.

Among the many ways in which the world changed in 2001 was the addition to the Nihon Sumo Kyokai’s official list of kimarite (‘deciding move’, literally ‘deciding hand’) of a category of five self-defeating moves. (This is where the official translation of kimarite as ‘winning technique’ becomes a bit awkward.)

• fumidashi ‘(rear) step out’ – This is when the defending rikishi accidentally steps back over the edge without the attacker initiating any kind of technique [cf. fumie (‘step pictures’), the holy icons that early Japanese Christians were supposed to step on to prove they were no longer believers].
• isamiashi ‘forward step out’ [lit. ‘spirited foot’] – This is when the attacking rikishi accidentally steps too far forward and out of the ring before winning the match, giving the victory to his opponent.
• tsukihiza ‘touch knee’ – This is when a rikishi stumbles without any real contact with his opponent and loses the match by touching down with one or both knees.
• tsukite ‘touch hand’ – This is when a rikishi stumbles without any real contact with his opponent and loses the match by touching down with one or both hands.
• koshikudake ‘hip collapse’ – This is when a rikishi falls over backwards without his opponent attempting any technique.

In this instance, the rather hide-bound, but tradition-inventing Sumo Kyokai seems to have been rather visionary. I expect “Self-Defeat, and How to Avoid It” to be one of the major themes of the 21st century.

UPDATE: After Day 12 of the current Natsu Basho, Asashoryu remains 12-0, with no one else closer than 10-2. The Bulgarian Kotooshu suffered a quick and brutal loss to Asashoryu yesterday by a tsukidashi (‘frontal thrust out’), but he recovered nicely today to beat the ozeki (‘champion’) Chiyotaikai, who had been only one loss behind the grand champion, but is now at 10-2.

Six days into the May Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo, Mongolian grand champion Asashoryu and low-ranking rookie Tamakasuga share the lead at 6-0. Half of Asashoryu’s bouts so far have been against other foreigners: Georgian Kokkai on Day 4, Russian Roho on Day 5, and fellow Mongolian Kyokutenho on Day 6. All the latter now stand at 2-4.

For more, see fellow sumophile Tom at That’s News To Me.

It’s now just over halfway through the Osaka Grand Sumo Tournament, and Asashoryu has taken sole possession of the lead, but Fukuoka favorite Kaio is just one loss behind.

OSAKA (Kyodo) Yokozuna Asashoryu unleashed his fury on Kokkai to maintain his lead with an unblemished record at the Spring Grand Sumo Tournament on Monday.

Asashoryu had little problem absorbing the burly fourth-ranked maegashira’s charge before slapping him forward onto the ring’s surface to improve to a spotless 9-0 at Osaka Municipal Gymnasium. Kokkai, who hails from the Soviet former republic of Georgia, slipped to 5-4.

Asashoryu, who is the odds-on favorite to win his 11th Emperor’s Cup after taking the New Year’s title with a perfect 15-0 record, improved his winning streak to 24. Ozeki Kaio stayed hot in pursuit of the yokozuna at 8-1.

Last year, the Mongolian grand champion won five of six tournaments and appears to be on another roll in 2005.

UPDATE, Day 13 – Ozeki Tochiazuma ended Asashoryu’s winning streak at 27-0 and postposed the yokozuna’s chance to clinch the Osaka Grand Sumo Tournament for at least one more day. He would have to lose the final two bouts for anyone else to have a chance to tie his record and force a deciding match-up.

UPDATE, Day 14 – Sure enough, Asashoryu won his very next bout to clinch the tournament at 13-1. His next closest competitor was Tamanoshim, at 11-3. His final bout won’t matter–except to start another winning streak. Russian rookie Roho has made a very respectable showing at 10-4, but the Bulgarian Kotooshu was a lousy 3-11 going into the final day, while the Korean Kasugao had a nightmare tournament, managing only one win in 14 days.

The Japan Times reports the final results of sumo’s first tournament of the year.

Grand champion Asashoryu overpowered Chiyotaikai on Sunday to close out the New Year Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo with a perfect 15-0 record.

Asashoryu, who wrapped up his 10th Emperor’s Cup on Friday, knocked Chiyotaikai off balance shortly after the faceoff and then waltzed the veteran wrestler out from behind to remain undefeated. Chiyotaikai finished with an 8-7 record, good enough to hold on to his ozeki status.

With his 10th career title, Mongolian Asashoryu joined sumo greats Kitanoumi, Chiyonofuji and Taiho as the only wrestlers to win the New Year meet for three straight years since the establishment of the six-tournament system in 1958.

It was also the second straight year that Asashoryu has gone undefeated in the New Year tourney.

Asashoryu won five of six tournaments last year and looks poised for another impressive run this season. He is the lone yokozuna currently competing in sumo.

In other major bouts, Mongolian Hakuho, who won the tournament’s Outstanding Technique Award, made short work of fan favorite Takamisakari to improve to 11-4….

Sekiwake Tochiazuma further solidified his ozeki promotion chances when he slapped down fellow-sekiwake Miyabiyama to improve to 11-4….

Bulgarian Kotooshu, a No. 4 maegashira, finished with an impressive 9-6 record after throwing down 11th-ranked maegashira Jumonji, who also closed out at 9-6.

In the early years of court sumo, wrestlers were recruited from the peasantry and selected more for their physical strength than for their technical skill. In all likelihood, there was no specifically developed technique for sumo as a combat sport and there was little or no sense of the wrestlers as professionals for whom the sport was a way of life rather than an occasional event. Around the twelfth century, however, the status of the wrestlers who appeared at the court tournaments seems to have become fixed, and certain provincial families regularly sent their sons to the court tournaments. (This gave them a connection to the central government through which they obtained posts such as provincial governor.) In this development we can see the beginning of the role specialization that is characteristic of modern sports.

Benefit sumo also seems to have contributed importantly to the specialization of the sport. The temples and shrines employed the services of professional or semi-professional groups of wrestlers which, if they had not existed already, were formed in conjunction with this new demand.

Eventually, some of these professional wrestlers began to hold performances of sumo for their own profit. In other words, they continued down the path that led to sumo as a more or less modern spectator sport. As in most modern spectator sports, economics rather than religion or politics was the driving force. It is also important to note that the origins of modern sumo were urban. The sport took shape in the three major cities of Edo (the former name of Tokyo), Osaka, and Kyoto. The promoters of sumo were not the wrestlers themselves, or even former wrestlers, but townsmen–the Japanese mercantile equivalent of the European bourgeoisie whose role in the modernization of Western sports can hardly be overstated. Thus began a differentiation of functions that, as often happens in the history of sport, eventually gave rise to what are now two distinct sports. As sumo became primarily a spectator sport, it began to lose its value as a practical, combat-oriented skill. The martial function of barehanded combat was emphasized by other activities. The Takeuchi school of unarmed combat, for example, emerged in the middle of the sixteenth century. The martial arts techniques taught in this and other schools were called totte [‘grip’?], koshimawari [’round the waist’?]–or in the Edo period (1600-1868)–jûhô or jûjutsu [‘soft arts’]. The last term is, of course, more familiar today.

SOURCE: Japanese Sports: A History, by Allen Guttmann and Lee Thompson (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2001), pp. 20-21

After Day 8 in the January basho, Mongolian yokozuna Asashoryu remains in sole possession of the lead at 8-0, with four rikishi trailing at 6-2.

Here’s another bit of historical background to mark the start of the January basho in Tokyo, where fellow Mongolians Asashoryu (‘Morning Green Dragon’) and Asasekiryu (‘Morning Red Dragon’) currently share the lead at 4-0. This basho may set the record for the number of foreign rikishi in the top (makuuchi) division: 10 out of 40 active in the current tournament–6 Mongolians, 3 Europeans, and 1 Korean. (There are actually 42 rikishi on the makuuchi roster for each tournament, but one or two are usually on the disabled list.)

Legitimization of Edo-period sumo was a long and slow process. Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604-1651), the third Tokugawa shogun, banned sumo from Edo in 1648. The reason for the ban was the shogunate’s characteristic concern for public order, which was often disrupted by tsuji-zumo (street-corner sumo). “Unemployed warriors and rough townsmen came into violent contact in these street-corner contests fought for small amounts of money tossed down by the onlookers who gathered around the impromptu wrestlers. Clashes between hot-tempered masterless samurai and commoners were incessant; drawn swords and the untimely death of a combatant or spectator were not unheard of.” Bans on sumo were issued periodically throughout the Edo period–at least fifteen by the mid-nineteenth century–which testifies to the helplessness of the authorities in the face of the populace’s determination not to be deprived of one of its principal pleasures. Eventually the outright bans were directed only at street-corner sumo. The authorities were content to regulate rather than to forbid benefit matches held at shrines and temples. These efforts to diminish the sport’s level of random expressive violence exemplify what Norbert Elias has called “the civilizing process.”

Promoters promised to control the incipient sport better and to donate a share of the profits to public works. Accordingly, benefit sumo was permitted in Edo in 1684, in Osaka in 1691, and in Kyoto in 1699. The authorities granted permits to hold benefit sumo almost every year after that.

From around 1750, the yearly calendar of meets settled into a pattern: spring and fall in Edo, summer in Kyoto, fall in Osaka. This did not mean, however, that stable sumo organizations existed in each of the three cities. The cities were merely centers where sumo groups gathered for major performances. Many of the wrestlers, especially those retained by a daimyo (lord of a domain), resided in their own regions. For these seasonal tournaments, wooden stands holding several thousand spectators were erected on temple grounds. Then, as now, wrestlers were ranked for each new event, but the ranks were not determined as they are now by performance in a previous meet. Rankings had to be rough and ready because the participants varied from meet to meet as promoters negotiated with various groups of wrestlers for each meet. With the passage of time, however, there was a degree of rationalization. Promoters identified the more capable wrestlers, invited them back for each performance, and ranked them less arbitrarily.

In some ways, however, Tokugawa sumo as a spectator sport still resembled the simulated mayhem of modem “professional” wrestling. At meets held in Osaka, for example, wrestlers who lived and practiced in the city and its surrounding region played the role of the good guys while wrestlers from elsewhere were the “heavies.” It was the same in Edo and Kyoto. It was good business to let the hometown heroes win. Like the enthusiasts studied by Roland Barthes in Mythologies (1957) , the fans were enthralled by the allegorical drama enacted in the ring and seemed not to mind the fact that fixed matches were hardly unknown. The prestige of a retained wrestler’s lord sometimes influenced the outcome of a match. Comparing records from the Edo period (1600-1868) is like taking at face value the results of modern “professional” wrestling.

Another uncanny resemblance to modern “professional” wrestling can be seen in onna-zumo (women ‘s wrestling), performed mostly, it seems, for men ‘s titillation. The names assumed by the women (or given to them by promoters) suggest the debased nature of the attraction: “Big Boobs,” “Deep Crevice,” “Holder of the Balls.”

Another characteristic of modem sports is a tendency toward national and international bureaucratic organization. The predecessor of today’s Japan Sumo Association can be traced back to an organization established early in the eighteenth century when the men who ran the centers where sumo wrestlers lived and trained formed a loose organization called the sumo kaisho. This organization achieved a stable form in 1751–the year that the English established their first national sports organization, the Jockey Club.

SOURCE: Japanese Sports: A History, by Allen Guttmann and Lee Thompson (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2001), pp. 22-23