RE: Shikona translation

[Stefan Gelow <f95-sge@nada.kth.se>]

At 08:11 2000-04-03 -0700, you wrote:
>--- "Joshua A. Reyer" <jreyer@grn.mmtr.or.jp> wrote:
>
>> All that remains to
>> remember is that "no" works as a possessive.
>
>"NO" can be also written in three different ways -
>kanji, katakana and hiragana.  Often kanjis are picked
>based on the brushstrokes as they do count the number
>of brushstrokes for the shikona just as some parents
>may do in naming their kids.

There are in fact five different more or less common ways of writing "no" in
a shikona. There are rikishi who has used at least three different "no" in
their shikona. The most common "no" are hiragana-no, katakana-no and the
kanji from which those "no" comes from originally, that is the three "no"
Joe Kuroda mentions above. Then there's a kanji that looks like a Z with a
small line on top of it. That was used (as well as katakana-no and "normal"
kanji-no) by former komusubi Naminohana. The fifth "no" sometimes used is
the "no" at the end of the toshiyori-kabu Miyagino. I don't speak japanese
(well, not much at least), so I don't know what those last two "no" actually
mean, but I guess there are others that know...

Stefan Gelow