Re: Day 6

[Yugo Yodogawa <yyy@soda.berkeley.edu>]

> It has gone political, basically, and wants to promote Takanohana just
> because 95% of the public wants him to be Yokozuna. 

I'm not so sure 95% of the public want him to become Yokozuna.  His popularity
has dropped considerably after the Miyazawa Rie fiasco, and it seems like
there's a good section of Takanohana-haters in the Japanese public.  I saw
a magazine poll in which they asked men what male public figure they 
despised the most, and Takanohana was number four.

I think at this point his older brother is a lot more popular than him, but
he's a ways away from becoming Yokozuna.

> They're catering to the public because they've encountered a huge increase
> in popularity since Taka/Waka hit the scene and want to cash in on a good
> thing.  The promotion could be a bit of reward to someone who has helped
> make the sport so profitable of late, also.

I'm also not convinced they cater to the public.  Two incidents that stick in
my mind are the Wakanohana-Konishiki match from May '93 and the Tomonohana-
Akebono match from last basho.

If you remember, Wakanohana was on the verge of Ozeki promotion and needed a
win on the final day of the May '93 basho.  Both Wakanohana and Konishiki hit
the ground at about the same time, and on the replay, it was even clear that
Konishiki's arm had hit dirt first.  There was not even a mono-ii, and they
gave the win to Konishiki.  No one would argue that Wakanohana is vastly more
popular than Konishiki, but even though there were complaints afterwards, the
kyokai remained steadfast in agreement with the result, and Wakanohana had to
wait another basho for Ozeki promotion.

In the Tomonohana-Akebono match from last basho, it was pretty clear that
Akebono hit the ground before Tomonohana, but even though they have access to
instant-replay, they decided upon a tori-naoshi.  Again, Tomonohana is a
much more popular wrestler than Akebono.

One could bring up the Takanohana-Musashimaru bout from last basho as a
counter-example, but I think that was more the case of an unfortunately
untimely isamiashi than anything else.  Also, if they would have given
Musashimaru the win, there would have been a three-way tomoe-sen, and I think
the public would have been thrilled about that.

If anything, I think the kyokai & gyoji cater to higher-ranked rikishi.

-yugo

P.S. Hey it's great to see the mailing list so lively!