Bernd 11/22/2025 (Sat) 11:06 No.54855 del
Now this is quite interesting.
Yesterday Onosato faced Aonishiki, both had 10-2 points, so a deciding bout. Onosato won, but how he won resulted in debates if the decision of the gyoji and the elders were right to give him the point or not.
The comments of tachi-ai explain a lot about the circumstances and the rules:
https://tachiai.org/2025/11/21/kyushu-2025-day-thirteen/#comments
Previously Slovborg explained that they have rules in case both rikishis are in a position they can't recover from, so both losing, the comments call their state "dead". I assume it follows traditional Japanese naming convention, I dunno. So when they are both dead the one in the dohyo usually gets to be the winner. On the other hand there are rules or customs about actively fighting in mid-air, commenters citing Ura's case when he pulls wins like that.
In theory they both were "dead" in the moment Onosato hit the clay. But it could be argued that Aonishiki was still fighting and he was the one pushing Onosato down.

I expected to get some insight from Mainichi, since they publish an article summarizing the bouts each day:
https://mainichi.jp/english/sports/sumo/
Except there was none yesterday.
Instead today I found this:
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20251122/p2g/00m/0na/026000c
This describes how the new female Japanese PM could defile the male only dohyo. It talks about tradition and female impurity and whatnot. Essentially the core of the problem in this case that the PM is usually giving a Cup to a rikishi. And now the PM is a woman. Now it turns out this won't happen this basho, she's somewhere abroad doing politics. But in January.
So if it is a problem in January... why publish this article now? Where is yesterdays summary?
It's a mystery.