Sumo Reference Updates

[Seiyashi 4,087]

There seems to be a discrepancy in Tochiazuma's DB page versus his actual records. He's listed as having 30 basho at ōzeki, but a query for ōzeki grouped by rikishi (http://sumodb.sumogames.de/Query.aspx?show_form=0&group_by=rikishi&form1_rank=o&form1_year=1969-2022&sort_basho=1&sort_by=record) has him at 31. Is the catch in the fact that he retired prior to his "31st" basho, for a score of 0-0?

Kotomitsuki has the same problem, where his page says he has 17 basho but the query result shows 18 basho.

[Asashosakari 19,320]

Yes, the DB doesn't count tournaments ranked-but-already-intai towards the career summaries. For a multitude of further cases, see the many yaocho retirements prior to May 2011.

[Asashosakari 19,320]

The DB has Shoketsu's real given name as Katsuaki, but the Kyokai has the reading Yoshiaki. Confirmed (of sorts) by the handle of his Twitter account.

Are there independent sources for the Katsuaki reading in his first four shikona?

[Tamanaogijima 756]

On 06/06/2022 at 23:47, Asashosakari said:

The DB has Shoketsu's real given name as Katsuaki, but the Kyokai has the reading Yoshiaki. Confirmed (of sorts) by the handle of his Twitter account.

Are there independent sources for the Katsuaki reading in his first four shikona?

Do the rikishi yearbooks count? In the H18 book - the last one he featured as 駒乃富士克明 - there is かつあき furigana for his shikona given name.

Small limitation: The H18 yearbook is the first one which has furigana for given names at all, before that it was only for the shikona. Now, the yearbooks had their flaws as well, but the idea that 克明 reads "Katsuaki" doesn't come completely out of the blue.

I guess someone has to ask him via twitter...

[Doitsuyama 1,185]

23 hours ago, Tamanaogijima said:

Do the rikishi yearbooks count? In the H18 book - the last one he featured as 駒乃富士克明 - there is かつあき furigana for his shikona given name.

Small limitation: The H18 yearbook is the first one which has furigana for given names at all, before that it was only for the shikona. Now, the yearbooks had their flaws as well, but the idea that 克明 reads "Katsuaki" doesn't come completely out of the blue.

I guess someone has to ask him via twitter...

I'm pretty sure I got that reading from such a yearbook or another source and from that took it for his real name. But sure, if the Kyokai lists his name as Yoshiaki I will change this now, and also the old shikona names on the assumption that a mistake is more likely than a different reading (which would also not be impossible).

 

[Asashosakari 19,320]

On 25/01/2022 at 22:44, Asashosakari said:

Ugh, I went down the toshiyori rabbit hole...

It happened again. Starring:

Aratama (pre-modern makushita rikishi without a DB entry)
Tomohibiki (pre-modern makushita rikishi with a placeholder entry due to kabu relevance) [ja.wiki]
Kiyosegawa
Shikishima (not the one who's currently an oyakata)
and the Tateyama, Isegahama and Kumagatani shares along with affiliated stables. [Relevant ja.wiki links: T-kabu, T-beya, K-kabu, K-beya]

The culprit this time was an attempt to figure out when the old (pre-Asahifuji) Isegahama-beya was actually founded. Here's how it apparently went (issues of interest for the DB marked as such):

Tomohibiki was a not overly successful rikishi, but one married to his shisho Tomozuna's niece and thus with an "in" towards a future oyakata career. Already 31 years old, for the February 1911 tournament he was promoted to makushita for the first and, it turned out, last time, as he promptly retired from the dohyo having fulfilled that era's kabu eligibility criterion. (Current DB status: His kabu starting date is given only vaguely as "after 1909" instead of 1911.02.) He became Tateyama-oyakata, taking on a share that had been vacant for a couple of years after the death of the previous holder, another former Tomozuna rikishi (who isn't relevant here).

Elsewhere, Kumagatani-beya had been in existence for a while, created by Aratama sometime after 1890, achieving a moderate level of success. In January 1921, ex-Aratama gave up his oyakata status due to old age, the stable being handed over to a successor. This turned out to be Shikishima, a former maegashira also of Tomozuna, 33 years old and freshly fallen to makushita. (Current DB status: Shikishima is correctly listed as having become Kumagatani in 1921.01, but not as a heya successor. Instead via an undated later branch-out that doesn't appear to be real, presumably listed that way because we just had no pre-1927 heya data to know what actually happened there.)

In any case, this was not a universally agreed-upon succession, as ja.wiki alludes to a dispute with the stable's sole active makuuchi rikishi Kiyosegawa who also hoped to take over. Snubbed, Kiyosegawa (with uchideshi in tow) left for....Tateyama-beya, apparently created at this time solely for that purpose; ja.wiki makes it clear that ex-Tomohibiki was a mere figurehead shisho with Kiyosegawa really calling the shots. (Current DB status: The Tateyama branchout is dated only vaguely to "before 1927". I'm not sure what will be a good, more accurate date to put. Maybe 1921.05, the month of the next basho? Ja.wiki doesn't actually say that Kiyosegawa left Kumagatani immediately after the dispute, but it stands to reason, given the general history of similar situations.)

To now answer the Isegahama-beya question - Kiyosegawa remained active as a rikishi for quite a while longer afterwards, finally retiring in 1929 at age 35. He became Isegahama-oyakata and took over the running of "his" Tateyama-beya shortly after, renaming it to Isegahama-beya in the process. So the heya carried that name since 1930 as already reflected on the DB, but its history went back to 1921. Ex-Tomohibiki stayed affiliated to the stable until his retirement nearly 30 years later. (By which time the heya had been renamed again to Araiso-beya, after it was passed on in 1953 to freshly retired yokozuna Terukuni who was using that oyakata name. It became Isegahama-beya a second time in 1961 when Kiyosegawa was one of several oyakata hit by the newly instituted age 65 retirement rule, and the share became free for ex-Terukuni to use.)

--------------------------------------

While looking into the players involved here, I came across an older post of mine in this thread. The change requests therein apparently slipped through unnoticed until now:

On 05/04/2018 at 18:54, Asashosakari said:

Some random finds while trawling through oyakata death dates:

Toyonohana has a full rikishi profile but no listed death date - his kabu profile does.

Same thing for Odate with his kabu data.

In addition, there's a discrepancy in the year of death for Shikishima (not the recent one), which is listed as 1958 as rikishi and 1957 as oyakata. It's 1957 according to ja.wiki which uses the now-defunct Takayama site as reference.

Also, two things spotted while going through the list of one-time toshiyori:

The no longer active kabu for gyoji Shikimori Inosuke should be annotated as "Tategyoji", not "Fukutategyoji".

And something that looks like it could be part of a much bigger issue with the DB data  - 13th yokozuna Kimenzan has a death date of July 23 as a rikishi, but September 7 for his short-lived time as oyakata. According to his ja.wiki article, it's September 7 indeed per the Gregorian calendar, while "July 23" (really: 23rd day of the 7th month) was the date according to the Chinese/lunar calendar (used in Japan until 1872). I haven't looked deeply into that as far as the DB goes, but it appears to be a general issue that pre-1872 dates aren't correctly converted between the Japanese and the English data. (Kimenzan's death really was on 明治4年7月23日 / Meiji 4 month 7 day 23 per the calendar then in use, so technically there's nothing wrong in the DB data, but that just doesn't equate to July 23, 1871.)

 

[Reonito 1,457]

When is the banzuke going to be updated to Nagoya?

[Kintamayama 45,116]

13 hours ago, Reonito said:

When is the banzuke going to be updated to Nagoya?

Was updated a few hours ago.

[Chiyotasuke 290]

Shohozan's intai is not updated. He announced intai (June 22nd) before the Nagoya banzuke release (June 27th) (This is irrelevant information. He is on the Nagoya banzuke anyway )

Edited July 13, 2022 by Chiyotasuke

[Seiyashi 4,087]

Quick question: what do the first four columns stand for in the simple-style view of the torikumi?

http://sumodb.sumogames.de/Results.aspx?b=202205&d=1&simple=on

I assume the first column is the day, and the third column is the division (13 - mz, 10-7 toriteki, 6 jūryō, 5 makuuchi because 1-4 are sanyaku ranks and not "divisions" per se). It also appears that the fourth column denotes that that bout is the Xth bout in the division. However, the second column is the mystery to me: it would appear to denote Xth bout of the day, except that the sequences restart and jump several times.

[Jakusotsu 5,969]

There's no doubt about columns 1, 3, and 4, but the 2nd column appears to be a mystery only Doitsuyama can solve.

[Jejima 1,384]

My guess is that the second column is just counting the match number for that division. 

If there is a cross-divisional match-up, then the bout is counted for the higher division - as it should be.  No? 

[Asashosakari 19,320]

Wait until you realize that the contents of column two are also different before and after the matches have taken place.  (But no, neither version makes any particular sense.)

[Seiyashi 4,087]

When the sequences jump, they seem to do it when there are division boundaries, but not all division boundaries cause a sequence jump. So far I haven't seen any case where it jumps in the middle of a division.

And the curious thing is that sometimes it restarts, then jumps back to what it should have been without the restart. For older basho (e.g. <2015), they don't seem to restart, though.

Also, for three days so far, makuuchi's bouts end with 3 digit counts, but the projected torikumi for tomorrow has makuuchi as ending with its own 20 bouts. Not sure that that's significant.

Edited July 12, 2022 by Seiyashi

[Tamanaogijima 756]

On 19/06/2022 at 01:25, Asashosakari said:

It happened again. Starring:

Aratama (pre-modern makushita rikishi without a DB entry)
Tomohibiki (pre-modern makushita rikishi with a placeholder entry due to kabu relevance) [ja.wiki]
Kiyosegawa
Shikishima (not the one who's currently an oyakata)
and the Tateyama, Isegahama and Kumagatani shares along with affiliated stables. [Relevant ja.wiki links: T-kabu, T-beya, K-kabu, K-beya]

 

The no longer active kabu for gyoji Shikimori Inosuke should be annotated as "Tategyoji", not "Fukutategyoji".

Done, done, done, and done.

I did not change the birthdays, though. Since Doitsuyama has an offline file for biographical data, too, that one would become outdated then.

[Doitsuyama 1,185]

4 hours ago, Tamanaogijima said:

I did not change the birthdays, though. Since Doitsuyama has an offline file for biographical data, too, that one would become outdated then.

That's right, but I'm happily correcting birthdays if needed. I didn't quite see what has to be fixed though?

[Tamanaogijima 756]

On 19/06/2022 at 01:25, Asashosakari said:

Some random finds while trawling through oyakata death dates:

Toyonohana has a full rikishi profile but no listed death date - his kabu profile does.

Same thing for Odate with his kabu data.

In addition, there's a discrepancy in the year of death for Shikishima (not the recent one), which is listed as 1958 as rikishi and 1957 as oyakata. It's 1957 according to ja.wiki which uses the now-defunct Takayama site as reference.

Those three have hidden under a big pile of kabu babu All three are DEATHdates, not birthdates.

Toyonohana (4168) - 1986.06.21

Odate (4158) - 1981.04.24

Shikishima (3660) - 1957.01.29

Edited July 13, 2022 by Tamanaogijima

[Seiyashi 4,087]

48 minutes ago, Asojima said:

In May 2022, Futagoyama had a Soga Soma.  Isenoumi added a Soga Shota.  Conflict.  After consulting with Kintamayama, Futagoyama added a "u" to get Souga.  The DB entry is "u"less.  Soga Shota has yet to get his first win.  The conflict may soon be resolved.

The hiragana in the JP version checks out. AFAIK the DB doesn't reflect the long vowel in transliterations which is why the romaji versions appear similar. That said, I don't know for sure whether the similarity in shikona is caught by the NSK's rule that shikona must be unique, or whether the difference in vowels despite the aura similarity is sufficient. 

Otherwise it would be Sōga vs Soga. 

[Seiyashi 4,087]

I know, but a) even the NSK isn't consistent with itself (Shoketsu on that page should be Shōketsu) and b) this introduces a systemic inconsistency into the DB at the cost of consistency and clarity for two rikishi. Of course the best case scenario is that the DB's romanisation should be updated to be consistent with the Japanese, but that is a ton of work rooting out every last case (I don't mind helping to find some of them but can't claim to be exhaustive).

IMO it's a judgment call to make whether to update it or not depending on the hierarchy of whether internal consistency or adherence to NSK sources is valued. To be clear, I don't mind if Soga is changed to Souga, just that I'm pointing out that there are reasons to also not want it changed. 

[Asashosakari 19,320]

It's indeed not a bug or mistake, it's simply the DB/Doitsuyama choosing to remain consistent with its romanization in the face of Kyokai inconsistency.
 

4 hours ago, Asojima said:

(...) Futagoyama added a "u" to get Souga.

Futagoyama didn't add anything, it's the Kyokai website staff disambiguating shikona on the site that way whenever a long-vowel shikona is joined by (or joining) the corresponding short-vowel version on another rikishi, contrary to their normal romanization practices. There are plenty of other cases beyond Soga/Sōga in the DB, for instance Hokutoryū/Hokutōryū, Tokiryū/Tōkiryū (twice!), Toki/Tōki, or Ono/Ōno (many times).

In the case of the recent Tokiryus, the short-vowel rikishi was the earlier one, so Tōkiryū was immediately added as Toukiryu. (Note that the Kyokai also didn't bother to change it to the normal spelling after the short-vowel Tokiryū retired.) It was the other way around for the two Hokutoryus, so the long-vowel one was originally just Hokutoryu for a couple of years, before it was changed with the appearance of the short-vowel one.

Note that they didn't do it for the makuuchi regular long-vowel Tōki back in the day, but that was at a time when the website didn't even officially support romanized shikona (or any coverage really) below juryo, so the brief appearance of the short-vowel Toki in the lower divisions was probably not relevant enough to mess with the established name.

Hokutōryū and Tōkiryū are also clear evidence that it's merely a matter of convenience (or maybe necessity) for the Kyokai website, because a properly changed romanization of their names would require the -ryuu as well, not just -tou-.

Edited July 14, 2022 by Asashosakari

[Tamanaogijima 756]

On 14/07/2022 at 10:33, Asashosakari said:

[...] are also clear evidence that it's merely a matter of convenience (or maybe necessity) for the Kyokai website, [...]

 

Funny that you mention that. Whenever I dig into their data I too get the nagging feeling that their rikishi data's key column is the shikona, not any id number.

[Seiyashi 4,087]

6 hours ago, Tamanaogijima said:

 

Funny that you mention that. Whenever I dig into their data I too get the nagging feeling that their rikishi data's key column is the shikona, not any id number.

How do they differentiate between successive bearers of the same shikona then, like the Asashio Tarōs? 

[Doitsuyama 1,185]

14 hours ago, Tamanaogijima said:

 

Funny that you mention that. Whenever I dig into their data I too get the nagging feeling that their rikishi data's key column is the shikona, not any id number.

They do have an id number, it's in the url.

[Tamanaogijima 756]

Disclaimer It is just an odd feeling that I have and it is not substantiated by proofs that would stand in court. I just felt reassured by Asashosakari's use of the word "necessity".

 

8 hours ago, Seiyashi said:

How do they differentiate between successive bearers of the same shikona then, like the Asashio Tarōs? 

They don't, at least not how they are using their database today.

Whenever they need to differentiate one from the other, it is only in historical data and so seldom that it is some kind of "oh, we know them apart but really don't bother to elaborate". And you can still use highest rank. There was a time when two Yutakayama were oyakata. Tokitsukaze was "former Ozeki Yutakayama" while Minato was "former Komusubi Yutakayama". Note that the Yutakayama part is rather a comment than a unique identifier. The Wakanohana yokozunae were "the 45th ...", "the 56th ..." and "the 66th yokozuna Wakanohana" during their oyakata time.

Locally - on any one banzuke - the shikona (shikona for rikishi + kabu for oyakata + "stage name" for the other urakata) is unique though.

 

40 minutes ago, Doitsuyama said:

They do have an id number, it's in the url.

I know, I know. But sometimes it feels like they have them but don't use them in a sensible way. Like some database savvy person told them that they should assign one to every rikishi and use it in the url but ever since they are wondering why they have to write .../profile/3321 and not .../profile/terunofuji.

They do not use it to make a connection to the (younger) oyakatas' rikishi page like some great other database does. The urakata pages don't link to the respective heya. They even had an english tokoyama list for some years and suddenly discontinued it again - strange if you had used underlying ids but not so if you had to manually check names' lists.

[Doitsuyama 1,185]

These ID numbers are not at all times present. For example if you just list the torikumi of a day, you don't see this ID (and sometimes there even isn't an hyperlink where you could see the ID in the url). For this reason it does make sense for a mainstream outlet like the NSK website to change the shikona from the standard romanization. The Sumo Reference is a niche website though, and so I don't see urge for me to make shikona "changes" to cater for the audience.

I thought about using unicode characters for long vowels but decided against it, as unicode wasn't too widespread. By now it seems to be more usual, so I might make a change to unicode characters (ō and ū) with another checkbox option on the left not to use unicode. But I'm not sure if this would even be conceived as a positive change from the users of Sumo Reference.