Reading the Shinchō Kōki · 08
How Two Sumo Winners Entered Nobunaga’s Service
At Jōrakuji, winning at sumo led two men into Nobunaga’s household service. The chronicle records both their admission and a new responsibility: overseeing sumo.
A fresh translation
From that day they were added to his household retainers.
They were appointed to oversee sumo: for both men, it was the highest honor.
Original text
今日より御家人に被召加、
相撲之奉行を被仰付、両人面目之至也。
Names and terms
- Jōrakuji (常楽寺)
The place where Nobunaga stayed and watched the wrestling in this entry. The text describes wrestlers summoned from Ōmi Province. - The two men
Namazue Mataichirō (鯰江又一郎) and Aochi Yoemon (青地与右衛門), identified as winners immediately before the selected words. - Household retainers (御家人)
Men taken into the lord's service in this setting. The word should not automatically be assigned the institutional meaning it has in a different period. - Appointed to oversee (奉行を被仰付)
Given responsibility for an activity. The specified activity here is sumo. - Honor (面目)
Public distinction or esteem. The final phrase is the chronicler's favorable evaluation, not a quotation of either wrestler's speech.
The event begins with a journey
Scroll Three opens with Nobunaga traveling toward Kyoto and staying at Jōrakuji. On the third day of the third month, he has wrestlers summoned from across Ōmi and watches them compete. The text names participants, adds that many accomplished wrestlers gathered, and identifies the referee. Only after that setting does it describe rewards.
That order matters. The appointment is not introduced as a standing recruitment regulation or as a general promise to anyone who can wrestle. It occurs within one recorded gathering, under a lord's observation. The surrounding dates place it between a stay on the journey and a subsequent departure for Kyoto. Reading the entry as a travel episode keeps it from expanding into a complete institutional history of sumo. We are following what happened at one occasion, not the founding document of a sport or profession.
Three rewards should not become one
The surrounding sentence records a sequence. First, the two winners are summoned forward. They receive a sword and companion sword. Then they are added to the household's retainers and entrusted with responsibility for sumo. Objects, affiliation, and duty are all present, but they are not interchangeable descriptions of a single thing.
A shortened retelling might preserve only the swords and call the episode a prize ceremony. Another might retain only their admission to service and treat wrestling as a test of future battlefield ability. The actual wording is more specific. It records material gifts, a changed relationship to Nobunaga, and an appointment whose subject is the activity just performed. None needs to be replaced by an imagined motive. The distinction is valuable precisely because the chronicler gives us more than a simple report that two men won and were pleased.
The importance of “from that day”
The selected excerpt begins with a temporal boundary. The men enter service “from that day.” This makes the result more than an approving remark made after a good performance. The chronicler presents an immediate change of affiliation, tied to the occasion he has just described.
It does not follow that their earlier lives are fully known. The entry does not provide a biography for either man, a complete statement of previous obligations, or an account of every later duty. Translating the phrase as admission to Nobunaga's service leaves those questions open. It also avoids imagining a modern employment contract. What the passage establishes is a relationship as the chronicler records it: the lord summons the men, bestows gifts, and takes them into his household. The starting point is explicit, even though the terms beyond it are not comprehensively listed.
Why retain the word “sumo” in the appointment?
The duty assigned to the two men is not left unnamed. They are ordered to serve as officials for sumo. English “oversee” is used here to make the activity understandable without pretending that a modern job title exactly reproduces the office. “Magistrate” can sound broader than the Japanese wording in this context warrants.
The explicit subject also limits the familiar temptation to make every display of physical strength a direct preparation for battle. The entry does not say that the winners were immediately made commanders of troops. It says what they were appointed to oversee. They may have had other responsibilities, but those would need their own evidence. Here, competence in a watched performance leads to responsibility connected with that performance. That is a sufficiently interesting outcome without adding a military training program that the sentence does not describe.
A different wrestler receives a different gift
Immediately afterward, the chronicle turns to Fukao Matajirō. His wrestling is described favorably as entertaining or impressive, Nobunaga is pleased, and a garment is bestowed. The narrator again marks the favor as something gratefully received. This neighboring detail helps distinguish the earlier appointment from the broader act of rewarding a performance.
The distinction should remain modest. The entry does not explain the exact standard by which one man receives clothing and two others receive swords and service. It also does not prove that Fukao could never enter service on another occasion. It tells us that this particular account gives different outcomes to different named people. Keeping those outcomes separate is better than inventing a uniform prize ladder. We can observe differentiation in the recorded rewards without claiming to possess the rules that governed every decision.
Who is included in “both men”?
The pronoun at the end is a small but important check on the scope of the appointment. The entry has already named a larger group of participants and described many more gathering to compete. Yet the appointment concludes by referring to both men. Its recipients are the two winners called forward immediately beforehand, not everyone mentioned in the opening list.
English needs to make some of that connection explicit. “They” in the translation refers back to those two people; it is not a new, unidentified group. Likewise, “his” refers to Nobunaga, whose watching, summoning, and bestowing organize the episode. These supplied pronouns make the abbreviated Japanese readable without adding another event. Following the persons across the sentence also keeps the next wrestler's reward separate. When the account changes to Fukao, it names him and describes a different act of favor. A concise passage is not necessarily vague about who receives what.
The chronicler calls it an honor
The last phrase describes the result as the height of distinction for both men. It is an evaluation within the narration. No speech by either winner is introduced, and no personal letter recording their feelings is supplied. The wording tells us how the chronicler presents the appointment, not the exact words the two men spoke afterward.
This does not make the evaluation useless. It places the gifts and service within a recognizable language of favor and esteem. The lord's attention is consequential: being called forward and entrusted with a duty counts as distinction in the account. But the historian should keep the narrator's praise separate from an independently documented emotional response. That small separation permits a close reading without either swallowing the passage as transparent access to private thought or dismissing its assessment as having no historical meaning at all.
What the appointment cannot tell us
The excerpt does not specify rules for the bouts, the shape of a ring, a ranking system, or a permanent organization of wrestlers. Nor does the surrounding participant list furnish a complete bracket from which every contest can be reconstructed. Those are different questions from the recorded appointment.
It does not establish that all successful wrestlers became retainers, or that physical ability alone determined entry into Nobunaga's household. It does not explain the men's full social backgrounds. Finally, it cannot be used to date the origin of sumo itself. A record of one lord watching and rewarding wrestlers is not an origin story. The limits are not defects to be repaired with colorful details. They define what this source can contribute: a specific case in which a performance, a gift, a new affiliation, and a named responsibility appear together.
A short passage about a change of relationship
The most striking action in the two lines is not a throw or a display of strength. It is being added to a household and assigned a task. The contest provides the immediate setting, but the selected words concern what follows it. That is why a small excerpt from a martial chronicle can illuminate more than fighting.
Read back into the complete entry, the appointment sits between the bestowal of swords and a separate gift of clothing to another wrestler. Read forward, the chronicle resumes Nobunaga's journey. For a moment, however, it pauses to identify a change in the lives of two named men. The narrator's concluding praise belongs to that change. The interest of the passage lies in its specificity: not that a ruler liked sumo in the abstract, but that this gathering ended with two winners entering his service to oversee it.
Source
Shinchō Kōki (信長公記), Scroll Three, section 1, “Sumo at Jōrakuji” (常楽寺ニテ相撲之事). The selected wording and its immediate context were checked in Hoki-yama Kageo’s 1881 upper volume, National Diet Library image 29, on the left-hand page at the opening of Scroll Three. The event is recorded under the third day of the third month; the date is not converted to the Gregorian calendar here. For the work's broader organization, see the guide to the Shinchō Kōki.