Tsuruonishiki

[Yamanashi 3,840]

According to the db, this guy broke into Ozumo in March 1970 as a member of the Sakaigawa heya.  His intai is unknown, but he was due to fall off the banzuke in May 1973, so anytime after that.

Here's my problem: Sakaigawa was vacant with the death of ex-Otachi in January 1970, and the kabu wasn't associated with a heya until the present Oyakata took over in 2003.  Tsuruonishiki is the only rikishi in Sakaigawa with a H.D. from 1915 to 1996!

This must be an error (?), but what a mystery!

[Maybe this topic should be "Amazing Stories of the Typo Rikishi"?]

[Seiyashi 4,087]

Couple of clarifications - it's Tsuruokanishiki, and there was no Sakaigawa-beya extant even when ex-Otachi was holding the kabu. My guess is a typo on the NSK's side as even they list Tsuruokanishiki as an ex-Sakaigawa rikishi as well.

The initial candidates for the typo analysis would be any heya with a two-kanji name that also ends in -kawa/gawa, but I've checked all the likely suspects (Inagawa, Minatogawa, Kumegawa, Tatekawa, Edagawa, Nakagawa and Tanigawa) and will you believe it, none of them were extant heya during the time of Tsuruokanishiki's career.

A possible fat-finger/absent-minded error of Sendagawa (three kanji and different first syllable) rather than Sakaigawa also turns up nothing, as Sendagawa too wasn't an extant heya at the relevant time.

[Yamanashi 3,840]

21 minutes ago, Seiyashi said:

Couple of clarifications - it's Tsuruokanishiki, and there was no Sakaigawa-beya extant even when ex-Otachi was holding the kabu. My guess is a typo on the NSK's side as even they list Tsuruokanishiki as an ex-Sakaigawa rikishi as well.

The initial candidates for the typo analysis would be any heya with a two-kanji name that also ends in -kawa/gawa, but I've checked all the likely suspects (Inagawa, Minatogawa, Kumegawa, Tatekawa, Edagawa, Nakagawa and Tanigawa) and will you believe it, none of them were extant heya during the time of Tsuruokanishiki's career.

A possible fat-finger/absent-minded error of Sendagawa (three kanji and different first syllable) rather than Sakaigawa also turns up nothing, as Sendagawa too wasn't an extant heya at the relevant time.

Yes, lazy fingers; hope the Mods can change the topic title (or maybe I can).

There may be hundreds of these errors, but this one was a real detective story, as you have also found.  The kabu list goes back to ~1920 and Sakaigawa was never an open heya until the recent administration.  In fact the earliest kabu owner listed was an Osaka Sumo rikishi!

[Seiyashi 4,087]

15 minutes ago, Yamanashi said:

Yes, lazy fingers; hope the Mods can change the topic title (or maybe I can).

There may be hundreds of these errors, but this one was a real detective story, as you have also found.  The kabu list goes back to ~1920 and Sakaigawa was never an open heya until the recent administration.  In fact the earliest kabu owner listed was an Osaka Sumo rikishi!

I think you can change the topic title. I've done it myself a couple of times.

It certainly was a fun little diversion. It's possible the clerical error was in a line misreading, in which case we'll never know the real answer except out of serendipity.

[Asashosakari 19,326]

3 hours ago, Seiyashi said:

Couple of clarifications - it's Tsuruokanishiki, and there was no Sakaigawa-beya extant even when ex-Otachi was holding the kabu. My guess is a typo on the NSK's side as even they list Tsuruokanishiki as an ex-Sakaigawa rikishi as well.

Which NSK source are you using?

In any case, maybe @Doitsuyama still has his original sources at hand and can confirm it as possibly a case of erroneous data entry. If it's outright wrong information, the rikishi should probably just have his heya data removed altogether (which wouldn't be unusual for that era).

[Seiyashi 4,087]

16 minutes ago, Asashosakari said:

Which NSK source are you using?

In any case, maybe @Doitsuyama still has his original sources at hand and can confirm it as possibly a case of erroneous data entry. If it's outright wrong information, the rikishi should probably just have his heya data removed altogether (which wouldn't be unusual for that era).

On revisiting the source I goofed: I got taken in by the kanji URL in the display bar (I really should have known better) and assumed that this was an official site:

http://xn--psso2y7wo.jp/rikishiPro/senreki/5234#contentstop - instead it appears to be the JP equivalent of the DB.

[Asashosakari 19,326]

Yeah, that's a site that ripped (or forked, to be charitable) the Sumo DB data in mid-2018 and has maintained it separately since. Up to 12515 / 12515 all rikishi IDs are exactly the same.

Edited November 1, 2021 by Asashosakari

[Doitsuyama 1,185]

17 hours ago, Asashosakari said:

Which NSK source are you using?

In any case, maybe @Doitsuyama still has his original sources at hand and can confirm it as possibly a case of erroneous data entry. If it's outright wrong information, the rikishi should probably just have his heya data removed altogether (which wouldn't be unusual for that era).

Hmm, since there are 3 height-weight entries I should have those details somewhere, but I will need some time to investigate.

[Yamanashi 3,840]

7 hours ago, Doitsuyama said:

Hmm, since there are 3 height-weight entries I should have those details somewhere, but I will need some time to investigate.

If the entry is a hoax, it's an elaborate and pointless one, so there must have been a rikishi associated with this data.

The name Tsuruokanishiki shows up on the db banzuke, of course.  Interesting is that there is another rikishi who was concurrent with Tsuruokanishiki, named Tsuruokaumi.  This fellow had a HD in 9/1970 with Isenoumi stable, then followed Y Kashiwado over to Kagamiyamabeya.  Also, the same month that Tsuruokanishiki joined, a rikishi with the shikona Tsuruokayama joined Isenoumi and moved over to Kagamiyama; his career lasted less than a year.

So, if (as I suspect) Tsuruokanishiki was a real rikishi, he was most likely associated with Isenoumi and then Kagamiyama stables.

Extra note: All three of the Tsuruo-'s were from Yamagata prefecture.  Tsuruokanishiki and Tsuruokayama were from Tsuruoka town in that prefecture, while Tsuruokaumi's listed hometown is next door in Kushibiki.  Tsuruokanishiki and Tsuruokaumi share the family name Ueno.

I may have to learn Japanese after all; this may be one of those occasions where there would be less typing.

Edited November 2, 2021 by Yamanashi

[Yamanashi 3,840]

... and how did I miss this!  Yokozuna Kashiwado, who branched out Kagamiyama stable in 1970, was a native of Tsuruoka.

[Seiyashi 4,087]

2 hours ago, Yamanashi said:

If the entry is a hoax, it's an elaborate and pointless one, so there must have been a rikishi associated with this data.

Not necessarily: fictitious entries are a known device in compilations to detect copyright infringement, since legitimately-sourced data would not have the fictitious entry. That said, I doubt that that is the case here; you're probably on to something re Kashiwado and Kagamiyama-beya but god knows how the error occurred to put Tsuruokanishiki in Sakaigawa.

Edited November 2, 2021 by Seiyashi

[Asashosakari 19,326]

Some empirical evidence in favour of the Kagamiyama-beya hypothesis:

I worked my way through the torikumi of one of the two basho which the DB has available for Ueno/Tsuruokanishiki (Kyushu 1970) , and rounds 3 and 4 shook out like this:

In the 0-2 group of rikishi for round 3:

Jd70w Hokkaiyama (Kagamiyama)
Jd72w Ueno ("Sakaigawa")
Jd75e Hoshika (Kagamiyama)
Jd76e Omidori (Takasago)
Jd79e Kochomon (Nishonoseki)
Jd83e Omurata (Nishonoseki)

Hokkaiyama-Ueno was not scheduled, but rather Hokkaiyama-Omidori. The standard continuation in such a double-skip is that the two rikishi skipped are getting paired up if possible, but Ueno-Hoshika also didn't happen, but rather Ueno-Kochomon and Hoshika-Omurata.

In the 1-2 group of rikishi for round 4:

Jd70w Hokkaiyama (Kagamiyama)
Jd71w Shinryu (Isenoumi)
Jd72w Ueno ("Sakaigawa")
Jd73e Ninomiya (Dewanoumi)

Hokkaiyama-Shinryu was not possible (already happened in round 2), and again Hokkaiyama-Ueno didn't get scheduled, but rather Hokkaiyama-Ninomiya. Shinryu-Ueno happened instead.

Disclaimer: I was pretty dismayed to find that the scheduling back then was a lot more inconsistent than it is nowadays, with loads of deviations from straight-down-the-rankings matchmaking. So the above observations don't necessarily mean as much as they would for a more recent torikumi. Especially that double-skip middle pairing thing was often not done, leading to 1-4, 2-5, 3-6 style pairings where 1-4, 2-3, 5-6 would have been possible as a more straight-forward solution.

I'm not going to look into the other basho (Kyushu 1971) since the nearest Kagamiyama-beya rikishi were ranked pretty far from our mystery man, and it's unlikely that I'll find any similar (non-)pairing action.

Edited November 9, 2021 by Asashosakari

[Yamanashi 3,840]

One more piece of data that may help nail this down: there is another Tsuruokayama, Hatsu Dohyo in 1960, intai in 1964 (final shikona Mikuniyama).  He was a member of Isenoumibeya during the time when Kashiwado was climbing through Sanyaku to Yokozuna.  Of course, hometown = Tsuruoka.

There are only four rikishi in the database with the shikona Tsuruoka**.  The fourth is Tsuruoka, 1937-43, no heya or shusshin listed.

[Asashosakari 19,326]

Bump, as I just ran into this guy again. @Doitsuyama, any chance for a possible resolution here?

[Chiyotasuke 295]

To put my 2 cents regarding Tsuruokanishiki's heya, if you take a look at the kanji of Sakaigawa and Kagamiyama 境川, 鏡山 - they look identical; the 1st kanji have the same radical 竟 and the 2nd kanji look like they could be mixed up somehow (the DB once had the shikona 木村川 scribed as Kimurayama). So, I think it's probably Kagamiyama after all and Doitsuyama misread the source material, assuming it was in Japanese. If it's true, his heya should be Isenoumi -> Kagamiyama.

Edit: Bump? @Doitsuyama

Edited October 24, 2023 by Chiyotasuke