Re: old nicknames

[abe@kaleida.com (Masumi Abe)]

"Human Crane" Myobudani is a stereotypical "soppu-gata" or chicken bone
type of rikishi. Soppu and Anko are two of the words describe the phisical
appearance of rikishi. Unlike soppu, "anko-gata" or anko rikishi is with
full of fat. I think anko is named after anko-mochi, a Japanese pounded
sticky rice cake with sweet red bean paste inside.

Myobudani the Crane's most favorite sumo technique was "tsuri", pulling up
the opponent with mawashi and deliver him out of dohyo. He did not care
where he starts this tecknique. He could pull up anko rikishi from one end
of dohyo and take him out of other edge of dohyo, even with holding the
opponent with only one hand on mawashi. He was tall with long arms, and it
is very difficult to protect your mawashi from his reach.

He won a makuuchi yusho while he was in maegashira. Anothre time he was in
a "tomoe-sen" with, I belive, Taiho and Kashiwado, the two rikishi create
Hakuhou Jidai, or Hakuhou Era.

Iwakaze the Submarine needed to dig his head on to his opponent's chest to
win. To make this happen, his tachiai is almost always with his hands in
front of top of his head. If you are familiar with Awaodori dance in
Shikoku island, particularly male dance, his tachiai was just like that.
Most rikishi hated matches with him. They tried to do "Hatakikomi" but very
rarely he fell to his front side. The best way to do sumo against him was
to hold him chest-to-chest with his head up on your shoulder. Even though
he has an "official" tokui-yotsu, the stype you prefer either right-arm-in
or left-arm-in, he could do almost nothing with chest-to-chest position.

In a sense they were one-dementional rikishi, but their presence was
treasured by many sumo fans from those days. They were totally unique and
identifiable. I think Mainoumi is very unique in his own way. Konishi is
very unique with his appearance. Mainoumi/Konishiki match would be very
interesting to watch.

Are there any really unique one dementional rikishi these days? Who are
they, and how are they unique about?

-Masumi

>In old days, during the early Taiho-jidai, there were two unique rikishi with 
>unique nicknames named after the way they play sumo.
>
>They were "Human Crane" Myobudani, and "Submarine" Iwakaze.
>
>Can you tell what kind of sumo they had? 
>You might be able to tell the way Myobudani looked like. I thought "Human 
>Crane" was one of the best sumo nickname of all time.
>
>-Masumi

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