An absence count does not prove that one wrestler is more durable, that one era was more dangerous, or that a return will succeed. Career length, division, scheduled-bout structure, complete versus partial absence, fusen results and the granularity of historical records must be aligned before any comparison.
Japan Sumo Association scorecards and absence notices are primary evidence, but counting the visible marks does not automatically create a fair study. The record describes participation. It does not, by itself, diagnose health, assign a cause or predict future fitness.
Exposure belongs in the denominator
A wrestler ranked for ten years has more opportunities to record an affected tournament than one ranked for two. Publish tournaments listed, possible competition days and actual bouts alongside tournaments or days missed. Yet a rate is not magic: makuuchi and juryo normally compete across fifteen days, while lower-division wrestlers normally have seven bouts. Dividing all blanks by calendar days preserves a structural distortion.
Either compare within a division and period or stratify the results. When a wrestler moves between divisions, retain the number of tournaments contributed to each group.
Survivor and selection bias change the cast
A study of long-serving wrestlers excludes people whose careers ended early. A manually chosen set of famous wrestlers overrepresents careers with well-documented narratives. Define the cohort first—for example, everyone listed in makuuchi during a stated interval—and do not add interesting names after seeing the outcomes.
Active careers are right-censored: their final duration and future absences are unknown. When they are shown next to complete retired careers, label that difference.
Missing detail is not “no absence”
Keep rest/no-bout marks, fusen losses, full-tournament absence and ordinary unscheduled lower-division days separate. A day without a scheduled lower-division bout is not an absent day. If an official notice gives no reason, do not infer a diagnosis from video, motion or fragments of reporting.
Historical records may not expose the same daily detail as modern pages. Treat that as missing information, not zero. Place interval, division, cohort size, excluded records, missing values, denominator and retrieval date next to every chart. Show distributions and medians as well as a mean so one unusual career does not control the story.
Define the question—and admit what the table cannot know
A testable question concerns records: within one division and interval, does the distribution of documented absences differ when ranked tournaments are the denominator? This table cannot decide whether training, body size, medical care or the era caused that difference. Restricting analysis to cases with a published reason would compare a selected subset, not all absence causes.
Repeat the calculation after separating complete and partial absence, changing exposure from ranked tournaments to possible competition days, retaining active careers as censored, and limiting the period to records with comparable detail. If the direction changes, call the finding sensitive to definition rather than a stable group difference. When an official symbol is corrected, preserve the former count and state which conclusion—if any—moved.
Return from the table to one bout
Even a high absence rate cannot tell you what the wrestler’s next tachiai will look like. On the return, watch the first two steps and keep that observation separate from the official record. Careful comparison does not weaken the data; it prevents the data from trapping a person inside a medical story the source never established.
Sources
- Japan Sumo Association tournament scorecard, absence information, and daily bouts/results (checked 3 September 2026).
Source links used for verification
Each link was used for the corresponding claim in this article; inclusion is not a blanket endorsement of the whole page.
Article verified:
- Japan Sumo Association tournament scorecardPrimary source (as checked for this article)
- Japan Sumo Association absence informationPrimary source (as checked for this article)
- Japan Sumo Association daily bouts and resultsPrimary source (as checked for this article)