Re: Banzuke release and secrecy questions.

[Doreen Simmons <jz8d-smmn@asahi-net.or.jp>]

At 2:34 +0200 2/8/01, Jan de Veen wrote:
>Hmmm. we seem to have a discrepancy here then!
>
>According to Grand Sumo Fully Illustrated the Gyoji does not start to draw 
>up the
>official banzuke (4 times larger than the printed versions) until 20 days 
>before
>its release, which leaves the "maki" (= the final draft banzuke on a 
>scroll, which is
>finished during that banzuke ranking conference three days after 
>senshuraku) in a safe
>for a considerable amount of time indeed, as well as giving the gyoji 
>potentially far
>more time to draw the official banzuke if he had started right after the 
>"maki" was
>finished! :-)

Doreen interposes:

I've been checking back and am amazed by the amount of plagiarizing that 
seems to go on. Baseball Magazine-sha's sumo dictionary, included in a 
"Sumo" magazine of 1977, is almost word for word what you can also find in 
the Dewanoumi-Sakisaka book and also the Kitade book (which I believe is in 
its English translation the "Grand Sumo Fully Illustrated" that Jan 
quotes); all three published by different companies. Since it's 
boilerplate, I think we can assume that the information is correct.

But I'm not quite sure what is the perceived problem here. The maki was 
made by 23 judges and noted down by the gyoji recording it; and apart from 
a few big promotions, the changes in the ranking are really of very little 
importance to outsiders. There's not a huge betting industry on the new 
rankings, after all.

The writing takes the gyoji eight or nine days (or did, when it was Yodo; I 
have no up-to-date information on how long it takes his successor). All the 
calligraphy is done by the one man, but his understudy marks up the paper 
by tracing out the lines. An ita-banzuke is also prepared; this is the 
wooden board that is attached to the base of the drum tower to advertise 
the current basho's attractions. This is produced by lower-ranking gyoji 
who are practising the skills ready to take over in ten or twenty years' 
time.

Another maki is also made, by a different gyoji of quite high rank; this is 
the long scroll that is used in the wariba (the place where the gyoji enter 
up the records) to create the final results, day by day as they come in. 
That is also reproduced, but after the basho.

>Alexander Herrmann wrote:
>> > Now, for me this raises a number of questions:
>> > 1. Why is this "maki" put in a safe for such a long period of time
>> > before the actual banzuke is made? Why not make the banzuke straight
>> > away?

A practical reason might be that the gyoji responsible has just finished a 
basho with all the work entailed and will welcome a bit of a rest before 
starting this nerve-racking task.

>What, for that matter, is the (probably historic or symbolical)
>> > reason for the release of the banzuke 13 days before the start of a
> > > basho?

Well, it's got to be released some time, and about two weeks before seems 
good. No point in making it exactly two weeks, because that would be a 
Sunday and you can't mail the things till Monday.

> > Here's what I found in "Sumo - Kampf der Giganten" (Fight of the
>> Giants) by German Eurosport commentator A. v. d. Groeben:
>>
>> Three days after senshuraku the committee meets and decides the final
>> banzuke (they seem to make some pre-versions also in the last days of
>> the basho).
>> Then the gyoji (apperently only one) writes the banzuke four times
>> increased, as in ancient times still by brush. This takes about two
>> weeks. The printing of this "raw banzuke" takes another two weeks and
>> is made by a company in Tokyo. They work for more than 30 years for
>> the Kyokai now, so the workers have probably always kept to the pledge
>> of secrecy.
>>
>> With the banzuke being finally printed, there are only two weeks left
>> until the basho starts, so the 13 days aren't that symbolic as you
> > might think :-)
 
Yes, well, not bad; I've never heard of the man, but he seems to have done 
more looking-up than the man who does the US commentaries. That 'four 
times' is a very rough figure indeed. And simple arithmetic can reveal the 
gaps in the information: if the writing took two weeks, and the printing 
took another two weeks, the banzuke wouldn't come out till the middle of 
the basho.




~Doreen in sumoland~

~ The proofreader's lament:
         When everything's right, nobody notices. ~