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When I began this project, I decided to only write words as they appear in modern Japanese. Sometimes I find a word with exciting kanji on Jisho, then my heart sinks when I spot the note, “Usually written with kana alone.” But it's not my place to insist on old-fashioned forms.

 

“Kadoban” has a form with two kanji: 角番. 角 means “edge” and is pronounced “kado” here, but readers nowadays are more likely to pronounce it “kaku.” So publications tend to spell it out with katakana: カド. As for 番 (ban), it means “a turn” (in a game) or “a shift” (on duty). 

 

Thus, “kadoban” refers to a contest where one's future is on a knife edge, or where one must fight one's way out of a corner. The term originated with the board game go, where it refers to the match that will determine the winner of a series. In sumo, it refers to an ozeki (a wrestler of the second-highest rank) who had a losing score in the previous tournament, and must get a winning score in this tournament or be demoted.

 

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For everyone except the top-ranked yokozuna, professional sumo is a constant struggle to avoid demotion. The kadoban system theoretically gives ozeki a bit of grace: unlike lower-ranked wrestlers, they don't drop down the banzuke (ranking list) as soon as they post a losing score. But it does mean they face more scrutiny than any other wrestler trying to recover from a loss. 

 

Even if an ozeki has a losing record in two tournaments in a row and drops to the sekiwake rank, the pressure isn't off: if they score at least 10 wins in the following tournament, they regain their rank. If not, becoming an ozeki again will mean repeating the same long process of building up wins over several tournaments that got them there in the first place.

 

Maybe I jinxed him with my uchimuso essay, but Ukrainian ozeki Aonishiki lost 8 of his 15 matches in the March tournament and is kadoban for May. It's not unusual for a wrestler with tremendous hype behind them to suddenly falter. Some observers blame the frequency of tournaments, the long provincial tours  in between, or the fact that taking time off to heal from injuries is discouraged (absence from a tournament bout for any reason counts as a loss).

 

On 6 May, four days before the start of the tournament, Aonishiki injured his ankle during practice and had to be taken to hospital. I haven't heard whether he will miss any days of the tournament, but it's very unlikely he'll sit the whole thing out, even if that would be better for him. The pressure on a kadoban ozeki is more powerful than any pain.

 

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It has to be said that some ozeki thrive in kadoban. Takakeisho, who was an ozeki when I first started watching sumo, would regularly take time off for injuries, resulting in a losing record. Then he'd return rested and recovered in the next tournament, bulldoze his opponents out of the ring and hang on to his ozeki status. When, after almost five years, this stopped working and he was demoted, he promptly retired (and lost most of his body weight, becoming unrecognisable).

Takakeisho's fighting style always struck me as effective but dull. His comfort with being kadoban impressed me far more. 

 

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For much of my life, I've been fighting not to fall from grace. My value seemed to depend on statuses that had been decided for me: honour student, spelling bee champion, employee who caused no trouble, dental patient who'd never had a cavity. I made myself push through my bouts with depression, lest I tumble down the banzuke of life. 

 

Then, last year, I was too battered to continue. I spent months off sick. I misspelled words and didn't notice. I lost a tooth because there were days when I didn't want to live, let alone floss.  I didn't just slip a few ranks, I fell out of my division. And then I realised no one had been keeping score but me. 

 

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Losing ozeki status isn't the end. While all eyes were on Aonishiki last tournament, another rikishi, Kirishima, was making a quiet but determined comeback. A Mongolian wrestler popular for his good looks as well as his fighting skill, Kirishima became ozeki in 2023 but lost the rank a year later, dropping as far as maegashira 2 in the following months. But from November 2025 he started racking up double-digit wins once again. In March he not only won the tournament, but secured his return to ozeki.

Blinking back tears after his victory, Kirishima told reporters he'd been inspired by his five-year-old daughter. She'd been too shy to cheer when he was first made ozeki, but lately she'd been urging him: “Papa, become ozeki again so I can cheer for you. I've been practicing!”

 

As a returning ozeki, Kirishima didn't get the same ceremonies that greeted him as a first-timer (such as the gift of a giant fish). But his little girl cheered, and I think that mattered more.

 

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The calligraphy at the top of this page is probably the worst shodo I've ever done. I thought hiding my failure would go against the spirit of this piece. Because I can't swallow my pride entirely, here's a better attempt:

I still have a thing for perfect streaks, and I've mentioned Fukuyama Masaharu in every essay so far. He doesn't have any connection to sumo that I know of, but I've been watching a new show he did the theme song for, Tatsuki: Too Kind for School. It's about a “free school" helping children who have fallen out of mainstream education, often because they can't bear their parents’ expectations.

 

 

Want to see if Aonishiki escapes kadoban? The 2026 natsu basho (early summer tournament) is on from 10-24 May. You can watch daily highlights and live streams of days 1, 8, 14 and 15 on NHK World Japan's website.

 

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