Question: Within rules to grab back vertical part of mawashi?

[Juhani Sirkiä <jsirkia@utu.fi>]

Dear list,

I just watched the days 6-9 of Aki Basho on Eurosport. On day 9 Dejima
grabbed the back vertical part of Akinoshima's mawashi (tate-mitsu?) and won
the bout by yorikiri. None of the shimpans seemed to protest the gyoji's
decision.

Now, did I hallucinate (Is my flu *that* bad?) or was it just an error from
the gyoji and shimpans or isn't grabbing this part of mawashi forbidden
after all? I've lived months under the impression that grabbing the front
vertical part of mawashi automatically leads to a loss by hansoku and the
grabbing of the back vertical part is forbidden as well but leads to a loss
only if the offending rikishi doesn't release his grip immediately after
gyoji's order to do so. In this bout I think that gyoji wasn't placed well
enough to see this grip. Anyway, I feel that shimpan should have seen what
happened and called for a mono-ii.

I don't remember there was discussion about this bout on the list at the
time but I could remember wrong. The archive at the great www.banzuke.com
wasn't of help this time and Ken Coller doesn't mention a thing about this
at http://www.sumoweb.com/sumonow/Aki99/Day9Aki99.html .

Jussi aka Kitaseiya

-------------
Juhani Sirkiä, jsirkia@utu.fi
http://users.utu.fi/jsirkia/ozumo/
Ozumo, Sport of Gods