Yakichi Tsushimanada

Who They Were

Tsushimanada Yakichi (對馬洋弥吉, つしまなだ やきち) was a Japanese professional sumo wrestler and later a politician. He was born on 19 August 1887, in the twentieth year of the Meiji era (明治, めいじ), and died on 16 February 1933 at the age of forty-five. He came from Tsushima, an island group in Nagasaki Prefecture, the long chain of islands that sits in the strait between Kyushu and the Korean peninsula.

He reached the rank of ōzeki (大関, おおぜき), the second-highest rank in professional sumo, one step below yokozuna (横綱, よこづな). Ōzeki is not a title awarded for a single victory but a rank held over time, and only a small number of wrestlers ever attain it. He was born Yakichi Kawakami (川上弥吉, かわかみ やきち) and took the fighting name Tsushimanada, a name that announces both his island home and his sport.

Life and Career

Tsushimanada was born in 1887, the year the Meiji government was consolidating the modern Japanese state. Sumo in that era was in the middle of its own transformation: the sport was organising itself around a national governing body, a ranked hierarchy, and a touring schedule that carried its top wrestlers from Tokyo to the other great cities. A wrestler from a remote island prefecture entering that world was making a long journey in more than one sense.

He rose through the ranks to ōzeki. In the history of Nagasaki Prefecture, he is one of six wrestlers to have reached or surpassed that rank. He was also the first man from the prefecture to do so since the fourth Tamagaki Gakunosuke (玉垣 岳之助, たまがき がくのすけ), 107 years earlier. That gap of more than a century between one Nagasaki ōzeki and the next measures how rare the achievement was, and how isolated the prefecture's sumo talent had been from the top of the sport.

After his sumo career he entered politics, serving as a politician in the years before his death in 1933. He did not live to see the sport's later decades; he died in the winter of 1933, in the early years of the Shōwa era (昭和, しょうわ).

Why They Matter

Tsushimanada matters for two reasons that reinforce each other. The first is rank: ōzeki is the summit of the sport for all but a handful of wrestlers, and reaching it from Tsushima, an island domain far from the great sumo centres, was a genuine feat. The second is timing: he was the first wrestler from Nagasaki Prefecture to reach ōzeki in 107 years. A gap of that length is not a curiosity; it is a statement about how concentrated sumo's highest ranks were in a few regions, and about what it took for an outsider to break into them.

He is also a reminder that sumo careers in this period were not always the whole of a public life. Tsushimanada moved from the ring into politics, carrying the name he had made in sumo into a second career. For readers learning Japanese, his name is a compact lesson in how Japanese names work: a place, a sport, and a personal name pressed into a single four-character form.

The Name in Japanese

The full name in Japanese is 對馬洋弥吉. It is read つしまなだ やきち in kana, and written Tsushimanada Yakichi in romaji. The family name, or shikona (四股名, しこな — a wrestler's fighting name), is 對馬洋; the given name is 弥吉.

對 — read つ (tsu) here. This is the older, formal form of the character 対, meaning "to face" or "to oppose." In this name it is not used for its everyday meaning at all: it is the first character of 對馬 (Tsushima), the island group in Nagasaki Prefecture. The name of the islands is written with this character plus 馬.

馬 — read ま (ma) here, though the character on its own is normally read うま (uma) or ば (ba) and means "horse." Together, 對馬 (つしま, Tsushima) is the place name. The reading つしま does not follow from the two characters individually; it is a place name with its own established pronunciation, which is common in Japanese geography.

洋 — read なだ (nada) here. The character means "ocean" or "open sea," and is normally read よう (yō) in compounds. The reading なだ is a native Japanese word for a stretch of open sea, and it is the second half of the fighting name: 對馬洋 ties the wrestler to the sea around his home islands. The full shikona 對馬洋 is read つしまなだ.

弥 — read や (ya) here. The character means "increasingly," "more and more," or "widely," and appears in given names. It is the first character of the given name 弥吉.

吉 — read きち (kichi) here. The character means "good fortune," "luck," or "auspicious," and is a very common element in Japanese given names, especially for boys born in the Meiji and Taishō eras. The given name 弥吉 (やきち, Yakichi) combines "increasingly" with "good fortune."

The birth name was 川上弥吉 (かわかみ やきち, Kawakami Yakichi). 川 (かわ, kawa) means "river" and 上 (かみ, kami) means "above" or "upper," so 川上 is a common surname meaning roughly "upper river." He kept the given name 弥吉 and replaced the surname with the shikona 對馬洋 when he became a ranked wrestler, as sumo wrestlers traditionally do.

Legacy

Tsushimanada's place in the record is fixed by two facts: he reached ōzeki, and he was the first wrestler from Nagasaki Prefecture to do so in 107 years, since the fourth Tamagaki Gakunosuke. He remains one of six wrestlers from the prefecture to have reached or surpassed that rank. He died on 16 February 1933, at forty-five, having moved from sumo into politics. His fighting name, built from the name of his home islands and the sea around them, keeps the place he came from inside the record of his career.