Sumo Terms Explained: A Glossary of 50+ Words

The eight words to learn first

If you are watching your first tournament, do not try to absorb the whole list. Eight terms will get you through a day of sumo, and everything else can wait until you meet it.

Term	Japanese	What it means
rikishi	力士	A sumo wrestler. The word sumo itself refers to the sport, not the man.
dohyo	土俵	The raised clay ring. Step out of it and you lose.
mawashi	まわし	The heavy silk belt, and the handhold most throws start from.
gyoji	行司	The referee in robes who stands inside the ring.
tachiai	立合い	The charge that starts a bout, launched from a crouch.
kimarite	決まり手	The officially named technique that decided the bout.
banzuke	番付	The ranking sheet, redrawn after every tournament.
basho	場所	A tournament. Six a year, fifteen days each.

The ranks, in order

Sumo has one ladder and everyone is on it. The top division is makuuchi; the top five ranks inside it are the ones with names you will hear. Below makuuchi the divisions descend through juryo to jonokuchi at the bottom.

Rank or division	Japanese	Where it sits
yokozuna	横綱	The top rank. Cannot be demoted; a failing yokozuna is expected to retire.
ozeki	大関	Second rank, and the highest one you can be demoted from.
sekiwake	関脇	Third rank. Where a demoted ozeki lands.
komusubi	小結	Fourth rank, and the lowest of the sanyaku group.
maegashira	前頭	The rank-and-file of the top division, numbered from 1 downward.
juryo	十両	Second division. The lowest salaried rank.
makushita	幕下	Third division. Unsalaried; competes on seven days, not fifteen.
sandanme	三段目	Fourth division.
jonidan	序二段	Fifth division.
jonokuchi	序ノ口	Bottom division, where a new wrestler first appears on the rankings.

Two group names cut across that ladder. Sanyaku (三役) means ozeki, sekiwake and komusubi together — the titled ranks below yokozuna. Sekitori (関取) means juryo and above: the wrestlers who draw a salary, wear the silk belt in competition and have attendants. Everyone below that line is, in practical terms, an unpaid apprentice.

A to Z of sumo terms

Everything else, alphabetically. Where a term has its own guide on this site, the term links to it.

Term	Japanese	Meaning
banzuke	番付	The ranking sheet issued before each tournament in stylized calligraphy, with every wrestler’s rank for the next fifteen days.
basho / honbasho	場所 / 本場所	An official tournament. Six a year: Tokyo in January, May and September, Osaka in March, Nagoya in July, Fukuoka in November.
chanko-nabe	ちゃんこ鍋	The stew that is the staple of stable cooking, eaten in enormous quantities after morning training.
chikara-mizu	力水	“Power water.” A wrestler rinses his mouth with water handed to him by the previous winner or the next man on his side.
chonmage	丁髷	The plain topknot worn by wrestlers below juryo.
danpatsu-shiki	断髪式	The retirement ceremony, in which the topknot is cut off one snip at a time by hundreds of guests.
dohyo	土俵	The ring: a raised clay platform with the fighting circle marked by half-buried straw bales.
dohyo-iri	土俵入り	The ring-entering ceremony, performed by the top two divisions in ceremonial aprons before their bouts.
dohyo-matsuri	土俵祭	The Shinto rite that consecrates the ring the day before a tournament opens.
gunbai	軍配	The lacquered war-fan the referee carries and points at the winner.
gyoji	行司	The referee. Stands inside the ring throughout, and is never allowed to call a draw.
hakkeyoi	発気揚々	The referee’s call when a bout stalls: get moving.
heya	部屋	A sumo stable: the training house a wrestler lives in and fights out of.
ichimon	一門	A lineage of stables that share a tradition and cooperate in the association’s politics.
jungyo	巡業	The regional tours between tournaments, where sumo travels to towns without a big arena.
kachikoshi	勝ち越し	A winning record: eight wins or more in a fifteen-day tournament.
kadoban	角番	An ozeki fighting with his rank at risk after one losing record. A second one demotes him.
keiko	稽古	Training. Done in the early morning on an empty stomach, in the stable’s own practice ring.
kensho	懸賞	The sponsor banners carried around the ring, and the prize money the winner collects from them.
kesho-mawashi	化粧廻し	The embroidered silk ceremonial apron worn for the ring-entering ceremony, not for fighting.
kimarite	決まり手	One of the 82 officially recognized winning techniques, announced at the end of every bout.
kinboshi	金星	The “gold star” a maegashira earns by beating a yokozuna. It pays a bonus for the rest of his career.
kyujo	休場	Sitting out a tournament, or the remainder of one, through injury or illness. Absence counts as a loss.
makekoshi	負け越し	A losing record: eight losses or more. Costs rank, and for an ozeki starts the demotion clock.
makuuchi	幕内	The top division, of up to 42 wrestlers, comprising the five named ranks.
maezumo	前相撲	“Pre-sumo.” The unranked bouts a brand-new recruit fights before he appears on the rankings.
mawashi	まわし	The belt: heavy silk about 9 m long, folded in six and wrapped four to seven times around the waist.
mono-ii	物言い	The conference the ringside judges hold when they want to review the referee’s decision.
nokotta	残った	“Still in.” The referee’s call while the bout is live and neither wrestler is out.
oicho-mage	大銀杏	The elaborate ginkgo-leaf topknot, worn only by juryo and makuuchi wrestlers.
oyakata	親方	A stablemaster or elder of the association: a retired wrestler holding one of the elder shares.
sagari	下がり	The stiffened silk strings hanging from the front of the belt. Purely ornamental, and discarded if they come loose mid-bout.
sansho	三賞	The three special prizes: outstanding performance, fighting spirit and technique. Eight wins minimum to qualify.
sekitori	関取	A salaried wrestler, meaning juryo and above. The dividing line of a sumo career.
senshuraku	千秋楽	The final day of a tournament, when the championship and the prizes are decided.
shikiri	仕切り	The staring-down ritual before the charge: crouch, rise, salt, repeat. Four minutes are allowed in the top division.
shikona	四股名	A wrestler’s ring name, often built from his stablemaster’s name or his birthplace.
shimpan	審判	The five ringside judges, all former wrestlers, who can overrule the referee.
tachiai	立合い	The initial charge. Both wrestlers must rise together; it is where most bouts are effectively decided.
tawara	俵	The rice-straw bales that mark the ring, buried in the clay so a wrestler can brace against them.
tokoyama	床山	The hairdressers who tie every wrestler’s topknot. They are employed by the association and ranked in their own hierarchy.
toshiyori kabu	年寄株	An elder share. There is a fixed number, and a retiring wrestler needs one to stay in the sport.
tsukebito	付け人	The junior wrestlers assigned to serve a sekitori, carrying his bags and looking after his belt.
tsuna	綱	The braided hemp rope a yokozuna wears, weighing roughly 11 to 15 kg. The rope is what the rank is named for.
yobidashi	呼出	The ring attendants who chant the names, build and sweep the ring, carry the banners and beat the drum.
yokozuna	横綱	The highest rank, and the only one that cannot be demoted.
yumitori-shiki	弓取式	The bow-twirling ceremony that closes each day, performed by a lower-ranked wrestler.
yusho	優勝	The tournament championship, taken by whoever finishes with the best record.
zensho yusho	全勝優勝	A perfect championship: fifteen wins, no losses.

Once you know the words

The glossary explains what things are called. These three pages answer the questions people ask next, using figures compiled from the Japan Sumo Association and from Michihiro Taguchi’s own record-keeping.

• How much do sumo wrestlers weigh? — the current top-division roster, weighed and sorted.
• How much do sumo wrestlers earn? — pay by rank, and how much of it is actually published.
• Who is the greatest of all time? — ranked on win rate, title rate and availability, with the method shown first.

Why sumo keeps its Japanese

Other Japanese sports export happily into English. Judo throws have English names in Olympic commentary; karate belts are described by colour. Sumo does not translate, and the reason is that most of its terms have no equivalent to translate into.

Yokozuna is often rendered “grand champion,” which is roughly right and misses the point: the rank is named after a rope, worn only in ceremony, that marks a man as the sport’s representative rather than merely its best wrestler. Kinboshi is a “gold star,” which sounds decorative until you learn it pays a bonus in every pay packet for the rest of a career. Kadoban has no English word at all, because no other sport demotes a champion for two bad months in a row.

So the vocabulary is not an obstacle placed in front of the sport. It is the sport, described accurately. Once the words stop being noise, the ritual stops looking arbitrary — each thing on the clay has a name because it has a function.

If you are starting from zero, the fastest route in is the rules of sumo, then what a rikishi actually is, and then the two words the referee shouts — which is the difference between watching noise and watching a contest.

Frequently asked questions

What are the basic sumo terms a beginner needs?

Eight will carry you through a broadcast: rikishi (wrestler), dohyo (the ring), mawashi (the belt), gyoji (the referee), tachiai (the charge that starts a bout), kimarite (the technique that ends it), banzuke (the ranking sheet), and basho (a tournament). Everything else can be picked up as you meet it.

What are the sumo ranks in order?

From the top: yokozuna, ozeki, sekiwake, komusubi and maegashira, which together make up the top division, makuuchi. Below that the divisions run juryo, makushita, sandanme, jonidan and jonokuchi. Juryo and above are salaried and are called sekitori.

What does the sumo referee shout?

“Nokotta” while the wrestlers are moving, meaning neither is out yet and the bout is live, and “hakkeyoi” when the action stalls, meaning get moving. Both come from the gyoji, the referee inside the ring. The long chant of the two names before the bout comes from a yobidashi, a ring attendant, not the referee.

What does sekitori mean?

Sekitori means a wrestler ranked in juryo or above. It is the most consequential line in sumo: sekitori draw a salary, get attendants, wear the silk belt in competition and fight on all fifteen days. Below that line, wrestlers are unsalaried and compete on only seven days.

Why are sumo terms not translated into English?

Mostly because there is nothing to translate them into. Yokozuna is named for a ceremonial rope; kadoban describes a demotion rule no other sport has; kinboshi is a bonus that follows a wrestler for life. English approximations like “grand champion” or “gold star” lose the mechanism the word exists to describe.

How many sumo winning techniques are there?

Eighty-two, recognized officially by the Japan Sumo Association, plus five recorded outcomes that are not techniques at all — cases where a wrestler steps out or touches down under his own momentum. A handful of the 82 decide most bouts.

Sources

Japan Sumo Association, Sumo (official English introduction, sumo.or.jp): the tournament calendar, the division order, the makuuchi cap of 42, the mawashi and kesho-mawashi descriptions, the yokozuna rope weight, the sagari, the chikara-mizu, the count of 82 winning techniques, the five ringside judges, and the yokozuna’s exemption from demotion. Japan Sumo Association, official kimarite list (sumo.or.jp/Kimarite/), for the 82 techniques and 5 non-technique outcomes. Retrieved August 3, 2026.

Photo by Michihiro Taguchi — shot ringside.