Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast episode 576, The Kings of the Ring, Part 3.

You know, funny thing about Taiho's career.

He was, by basically any metric, one of the best ever to do it, particularly in his day.

The few people who did surpass him to any degree in the history of sumo record books did so in more recent eras.

And with a career like that, Tyho's retirement really should have only been the start of an incredible post-professional sumo trajectory, except that's not quite what happened.

Part of that has to do with a tragedy in his personal life.

In February 1977, six years after retiring,

Tyho had a massive stroke that left him largely paralyzed and wheelchair bound for the rest of his life.

As a result, he would never attain many of the postings you would expect from someone with such an illustrious career in better health.

Sumo Association chairman, a senior spot leading the Yokosna deliberation council instead of just being a regular member, that sort of thing.

Similarly, his ability to coach and run his own stable, branching off from Nishonoseki

stable with the rather uncreatively named Taiho stable after his retirement, well, it didn't

really go great because he just couldn't coach the way he wanted to.

And by the way, that stable is still around, but they have rebranded.

It's called Otakebea Otake Stable today.

Tyho did coach up a few great wrestlers in his day, most notably the Sekiwake-Ozutsu,

but when Taiho is your Oyakata, the elder running the stable, the expectations are going to

be high.

Failing to produce a single Olzeki to say nothing of another Yokozuna, well, Taiho's

stable was always going to be looked at as a bit of a failed experiment because of that.

In 2003, Taiho would hand over the reins of the stable to his son-in-law, Takotoriki,

who would in turn lose control of the place in 2010 due to accusations of gambling that led to the

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