Work in Progress: Kinboshi Stats Comparison for Yokozuna in the Modern Era (as of August 2025)
Covers Yokozunas #45 - 75, Wakanohana (the first!) to Onosato
Well, I finished the spreadsheet.
It starts with Yokozuna #45, Wakanohana (the first of three… so far), who “ascended” to the title in January 1958.
This is important as the first 6-tournament schedule started in 1958. There were fewer tournaments per year before that, down to only 3 tournaments in earlier years. To make fairer comparisons, I went back to #45. (Also, I think that’s where JWags started, as shown in the prior post.)
Let’s get to the tables!
Kinboshi count ranking
Let’s start with the easiest: the kinboshi given up.
Kinboshi doesn’t count fusen (absences by Yokozuna) nor wins due to a forbidden move (such as pulling on the topknot).
The spreadsheet I have for you to download lists all 31 Yokozuna in the tables.
Obviously, there is an aspect of longevity involved in giving up the most kinboshi.
Kitanoumi, the 55th Yokozuna, reigned from July 1974 to January 1985. He had 823 bouts as Yokozuna.
I’m not doing a longevity analysis right now — but obviously, the longer one is a Yokozuna, the more often one has the chance to give out gold stars.
Kinboshi Percentage Ranking
Let’s look at the percentage of Maegashira bouts that ended in kinboshi for each Yokozuna. This gets rid of the bias from having a long reign as Yokozuna.
Low percentage end:
Tamanoumi was a Yokozuna for only two years: from 1970 to 1971. Not even two full years. January 1970 to September 1971. He gave up only 3 kinboshi total.
Hakuho, on the other hand, was Yokozuna for over a thousand bouts.
Yeah, that’s a little different.
High percentage end:
Yeah, Hoshoryu and Onosato aren’t looking so good right now.
Kisenosato, the 72nd Yokozuna, wasn’t that long ago. He lasted as Yokozuna only two years as well, from January 2017 to January 2019.
Tochinoumi, the 49th Yokozuna, is farther back, and reigned from 1964 to 1966, for almost three years.
Percentage of Matches which were against Maegashira Wrestlers
This isn’t a performance metric, as the above were, but may be a measure of what the banzuke was looking like when these Yokozuna were active.
Some were around when they had 4 Yokozuna and a full set of ozeki and sanyaku…
…and we have one ozeki right now, and it’s nice to have two Yokozuna again, but are they in the tournament at the same time?
Ah ha!
Just so you can see what the range looks like, this is the lower end:
Yeah, let’s not talk about Futahaguro.
Correlation graph… for the heck of it
I’m throwing this out there, just because.
It’s not a strong correlation. Yeah.
But it’s also giving me an idea of how much to think about the dominance of various Yokozuna. If nothing else, they should be dominating the rank-and-file.
But only a few of them are have very low kinboshi percentages… and those guys were less likely to go up against Maegashira guys in the first place.
Hmm.
