Kashiwado Tsuyoshi

柏 戸 剛
Kashiwado Tsuyoshi

Personal data
real name	Togashi Tsuyoshi
Born	November 29, 1938
place of birth	Yamazoe, Yamagata Prefecture
Died	December 8, 1996
size	1.88 m
Weight	139 kg
Career
Heya	Isenoumi
Career record	599-240-140 (makuuchi)
debut	September 1954
Highest rank	Yokozuna (September 1961)
Tournament victories	5 (Makuuchi) 1 each in Juryo and Makushita
resignation	July 1969

Kashiwado Tsuyoshi ( Japanese 柏 戸 剛 ; born November 29, 1938 in Yamazoe , Higashitagawa County (today: Tsuruoka ), Yamagata Prefecture as Togashi Tsuyoshi ( 富 樫 剛 ); † December 8, 1996 ) was a Japanese sumo wrestler and the 47th yokozuna . In the 1960s he was the main athletic rival of the then most successful wrestler Taihō .

Still under the name Togashi, he began his professional career in 1954 at the age of 15. Rapid promotions followed, with his tournament victory in the Makushita division he was the youngest title winner in the history of this league. As early as March 1958, he won the championship in the juryo division, and in September of that year his name appeared for the first time in the ranking of the Makuuchi division, the highest class in Japanese professional sumo.

In March 1959, Togashi took on the battle name Kashiwado, a Shikona that has been used by sumo wrestlers at least since the 18th century. With a 13-2 result he made it into the top maegashira ranks, another good (12-3) result in September gave him a rank as Komusubi for the first time .

From 1960 to mid-1961, Kashiwado was very sure to face top fighters in the league. The highest-ranking wrestlers of his time, the yokozuna Wakanohana I. and Asashio III. , he defeated both several times. At Nagoya basho in July 1960, he even sat down, except for the sekiwake Wakamisugi , against all wrestlers sanyaku enforce -Ränge. This brought Kashiwado to Ōzeki .

In addition, Kashiwado had received a number of special prizes, but his first title win in the makuuchi was initially not. In January 1961 - Taiho has meanwhile also been promoted to Ōzeki - Kashiwado won the Hatsu Basho with a 13-2. A subsequent success did not materialize; However, since his performance remained consistently high, his win / lose ratio was enough for those responsible to appoint him yokozuna at the same time as Taiho in September 1961.

While his competitor, with whom he was a friend, now won about half of all tournaments, Kashiwado was unable to win another triumph despite good results. However, he delivered technically high-quality duels to his arch-rivals and emerged as the winner, especially in the second half of the decade.

Before that, however, Kashiwado's susceptibility to injuries was revealed, which repeatedly forced him to take breaks and which earned him the dubious reputation of a "glass yokozuna": He almost completely missed the first four tournaments of 1963, but only competed in the March tournament to be eliminated after five encounters with elbow and shoulder injuries. His furious comeback with an undefeated second yusho in September against Taiho, who was also undefeated up to this fight, then undermined all speculation about an early resignation. But even from the summer of 1964 to the spring of 1965, Kashiwado , who had meanwhile suffered from diabetes, was barely able to compete and only fought twelve fights during this time.

The times of absence were always followed by brilliant tournaments and further title wins, such as in September 1965, or, after another failure, in January 1966. The last-mentioned success, however, came about at a tournament at which Taiho and the yokozuna Tochinoumi were absent this time and thus from everyone incumbent grandmasters only Kashiwado and Sadanoyama competed at all.

But in the competition with these wrestlers, Kashiwado achieved good results until his fifth and last tournament victory in July 1967 in Nagoya. After that, its star began to decline. In July 1969 he announced his resignation.

After retiring from the sport, he founded the Kagamiyama-beya wrestling team in 1970 . In 1996 he died of liver failure at the age of 58.

At the press conference on May 21, 2005, on the occasion of his own retirement from the sumo association , Taihō said: “ There was Taihō because there was kashiwado. There was kashiwado because there was taihō. "

Web links

• Info page of the NSK

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Kashiwado is the family name, Tsuyoshi the first name.