Banzuke
document listing the rankings of professional sumo wrestlers
A banzuke (番付), officially called banzuke-hyō (番付表) is a document listing the rankings of professional sumo wrestlers published before each official tournament (honbasho). The term can also refer to the rankings themselves. The document is normally released about two weeks before the tournament begins.
On the banzuke, wrestlers are divided into East, which is printed on the right, and West, which is printed on the left. Each wrestler's full shikona (ring name), hometown and rank is also listed. The top of the page starts with the highest ranked makuuchi wrestlers printed in the largest characters, down to the wrestlers in the lowest divisions which are written in much smaller characters. The names of gyōji (sumo referees), yobidashi (ushers/handymen), shimpan (judges), oyakata (elders of the Japan Sumo Association), and occasionally tokoyama (hairdressers) are also listed.
While not as old as sumo itself, the form and production of this document can be traced as far back as 1761, and has been a defining component of sumo for centuries. As is the traditional Japanese style, a banzuke is meant to be read right to left, top to bottom. It is considered a collector's item by sumo fans.
“Banzuke” enters the record as document listing the rankings of professional sumo wrestlers. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Banzuke, document and listing can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Banzuke” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Banzuke, document and listing provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q466621. None of the 4 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1761.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Banzuke” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.