Most championships

Hakuhō — 45 yūshō. Nobody else has 33. Likely the safest record in sports.

Most career wins

Hakuhō — 1,187

Longest win streak

Futabayama — 69 straight (1936–39), a number spoken with reverence

The untouchable ratio

Edo legend Raiden: 254–10 lifetime — a .962 career, before weight rooms existed

The 60s dynasty

Taihō — 32 yūshō, the record for half a century

The Wolf

Chiyonofuji — 31 titles and 1,045 wins at barely 120 kg

First foreign yokozuna

Akebono (Hawaii, USA), promoted 1993

Heaviest sekitori ever

Konishiki, around 285 kg at peak

Total yokozuna in history

75 — Hōshōryū is No. 74, Ōnosato No. 75

Greatest comeback

Terunofuji — knees ruined, fell from ōzeki to the fifth division, climbed all the way back to yokozuna

Below the line, in makushita and down, a wrestler is technically an apprentice. He gets an allowance rather than a salary, sleeps in a shared room, serves the sekitori, does the cooking and the cleaning, and fights seven bouts a tournament.

Above it, everything changes at once:

• A salary — a real one, paid monthly by the Association.
• Attendants (tsukebito) — lower-ranked men assigned to him.
• His own room in the heya, and permission to marry and live out.
• A keshō-mawashi and a place in the ring-entering ceremony.
• The ōichō — the ginkgo-leaf topknot, worn only by sekitori.
• Fifteen bouts a tournament instead of seven.
• A share of the kenshō envelopes carried into the ring.

This is why promotion to jūryō is the moment a sumo career actually begins, and why men who spend a decade in makushita and never cross the line are spoken of with real sympathy. One rank is the difference between serving tea and being served it.

They are usually built from stock elements a stable favours, so a shikona tells you where a man trained. Ryū 竜 (dragon) runs through Tatsunami-beya. Kotō 琴 belongs to Sadogatake. Take 武 to Takadagawa. Others take a syllable from their master's own fighting name, or from a mountain, a river or a province near where they were born.

A shikona can change mid-career — on promotion, on a stablemaster's word, or to carry forward a famous name the heya wants kept alive. A man may fight as one name in makushita and another entirely as an ōzeki. Every wrestler's profile on this site lists the names he has fought under and the tournament each one changed at, because the change is often the story.

Foreign-born wrestlers get one too, and the good ones are small acts of translation — Ukrainian-born Aonishiki's name carries the blue of his home flag.

Gyōji 行司 — the referee. In court dress five hundred years out of date, carrying a gunbai war fan. He must point the fan at a winner immediately — even when he cannot possibly know — and the five judges at ringside may then overrule him. Gyōji are ranked exactly as wrestlers are, promoted slowly up a ladder of their own, and the top two inherit the names Kimura Shōnosuke and Shikimori Inosuke from their predecessors. The most senior carry a dagger, historically a pledge to resign by their own hand if they call a bout wrong.

Yobidashi 呼出 — the callers. They sing the wrestlers' names up in a high carrying voice, sweep the ring between bouts, carry the sponsor banners, beat the drum that opens and closes the day — and build the dohyō itself, by hand, from clay, before every tournament.

Tokoyama 床山 — the hairdressers. They dress every wrestler's chonmage daily, and tie the ōichō — the ginkgo-leaf fan that only sekitori may wear — for tournament days. It is a full apprenticed profession with its own ranks, and a wrestler's last act on retirement is to have that knot cut off in front of an audience.

A yokozuna does his own, alone, after the rest — the only ceremony in sumo built for one man. He wears the white rope (tsuna) around his waist and is flanked by two attendants: a tachimochi carrying a sword, and a tsuyuharai, the dew-sweeper, clearing his path.

There are two styles, and a yokozuna picks one on promotion and keeps it:

• Unryū 雲龍 — one arm extended, the rope tied with a single loop at the back. Defensive in character.
• Shiranui 不知火 — both arms thrown wide, a double loop behind. More dramatic, and superstitiously unlucky: the yokozuna who choose it are said to have shorter reigns.

The mawashi he actually fights in is a different object entirely — plain silk for sekitori, cotton below, and nothing decorative about it.

The bouts are exhibitions and nobody's record moves, which is exactly what makes them worth attending. Wrestlers who would never speak during a tournament pose for photographs, sign, and let children push them around the ring. There are demonstrations of the techniques, comic bouts, and a jinku — sumo folk singing — which is not a thing you would guess existed from watching a honbasho.

For most of Japan this is the only sumo that ever comes to town, and for the wrestlers it is the part of the job that pays the stable's bills between tournaments. It is also where injuries are nursed and where a man quietly finds out whether his body will hold for another basho.

A wrestler does not sell his own. Originals are given — to patrons, to his fan club (kōenkai), to people the stable wants to thank. Selling them himself runs against Association norms. So an original is a gift, and its value to the person holding it is mostly that it was given.

What you can buy is a printed replica, and there is nothing shady about that: the Kokugikan gift shops sell them cheaply, and specialist dealers and auction sites carry them too. Telling the two apart is the skill:

• An original has texture — the ink sits on the paper where a hand pressed it, and the brushwork varies.
• A replica is flat printed, evenly coloured, and costs a small fraction of the price.

Provenance is worth caring about, because fakes exist and because "authentic" is used loosely by sellers who cannot say where a piece came from. If a listing will not tell you who was given it and when, treat the price accordingly.

You will not find tegata reproduced on this site. Not because the replicas are improper — they plainly are not — but because a tegata is a handprint and a signature, and a signature is the one thing about a living wrestler that is not sports data. Names, ranks and records are facts anyone may publish. A man's own mark is his. The same reasoning keeps faces off the cards and keshō-mawashi photographs — which carry sponsors' trademarks — out of the site entirely.

Kenshō 懸賞 are the banners carried around the ring before a bout — one per sponsor, paraded by the yobidashi. Each one is real money, and the winner takes the envelopes handed to him by the gyōji on the fan. A marquee bout between two popular men can carry dozens, which is why you sometimes see a wrestler walk off with a fistful of them.

banzuke

the official ranking sheet, rewritten after every tournament

basho

tournament; honbasho = the six that count

dohyō

the raised clay ring, rebuilt by hand for every basho

gyōji

the referee in ceremonial silk

heya

the stable where wrestlers live and train

kachi-koshi

winning record (8+ of 15) — promotion

make-koshi

losing record — demotion

kimarite

the official winning technique of a bout

kinboshi

"gold star" — a maegashira defeating a yokozuna

mawashi

the silk belt; the only equipment in sumo

mono-ii

judges' conference over a close call

rikishi

a professional sumo wrestler

sekitori

salaried wrestler — jūryō division and above

shikona

a wrestler's ring name

shiko

the ceremonial leg stomp

tachiai

the initial charge — where bouts are won

torikumi

the daily bout schedule

yūshō

the tournament championship

zabuton

the seat cushions famously thrown after huge upsets