Maegashira: The Rank-and-File of Sumo’s Top Division Explained

What maegashira means

The top division in professional sumo is called makuuchi, and its wrestlers are listed on the ranking sheet, the banzuke. At the head of the division sit the titled ranks — yokozuna, ozeki, sekiwake and komusubi. Everyone else in the top division is a maegashira. The word is best understood as “the rank-and-file”: these are full top-division wrestlers, but ones who have not earned, or are not currently holding, one of the named titles above them. Because the titled ranks are few, the maegashira are by far the largest group in the division, and most of any tournament’s bouts are fought between them.

How the numbering works

Maegashira are ranked by number rather than by title. The highest is Maegashira 1, and the rank falls as the number climbs — Maegashira 2, Maegashira 3, and so on down to the bottom of the division. At each number there is an East and a West holder, with East ranking just above West. The exact count is not fixed: the division holds a set number of wrestlers, so the more titled ranks there are in a given tournament, the fewer maegashira numbers are needed, and vice versa. The key thing to remember runs against intuition — a lower number means a higher standing, so Maegashira 1 is near the top of the sport while a high number sits just above the second division.

The joi: facing the champions

The highest maegashira — often called the joi, the upper group — carry the hardest schedule in the division. In the opening days of each tournament they are matched against the yokozuna, ozeki and san’yaku, because the schedulers pair the top of the banzuke together. That makes the top maegashira ranks both the most dangerous and the most rewarding place to be: a winning record there counts for a great deal and can earn promotion into the titled ranks. It is also where one of sumo’s special honors is won — a kinboshi, or gold star, awarded to a maegashira who defeats a reigning yokozuna. A kinboshi brings the wrestler a permanent rise in his pay for the rest of his career.

Moving up and down

Like the rest of the banzuke, maegashira rise and fall by results. Each wrestler fights 15 bouts in a tournament; a majority of wins is a kachi-koshi, a winning record, and a majority of losses is a make-koshi, a losing record. A winning record moves a maegashira up the list for the next tournament and a losing record moves him down, with the size of the move scaled to how good or bad the record was. At the top, a strong run can lift a leading maegashira into komusubi and the san’yaku. At the bottom, a poor record can drop a low maegashira out of the top division altogether, down into juryo, the second division — a demotion every makuuchi wrestler fights to avoid.

The rank-and-file champion and the special prizes

Although the championship is usually contested by the men at the top, a maegashira occasionally wins the whole tournament — one of the sport’s great upsets, the rank-and-file wrestler who beats the champions to the title. The maegashira ranks are also where the tournament’s three special prizes are decided. These awards — for Outstanding Performance, Fighting Spirit and Technique — go only to wrestlers ranked at sekiwake and below, which means maegashira are eligible for them while ozeki and yokozuna are not. For a maegashira, then, a strong tournament can bring far more than a winning record: promotion toward the titled ranks, a special prize, and, against a yokozuna, a gold star that follows him for the rest of his career.

Frequently asked questions

Photo by Michihiro Taguchi — shot ringside.