Isegahama stable
He joined Isegahama stable and at 16 first entered the ring in the 1936 Spring tournament. From this point he never suffered a losing tournament until making the makuuchi top division in the Spring 1941 tournament. Though he actually had losing tournaments in his first three tournaments in "makuuchi", he still rose in the rankings. This happened fairly often during these times and was due to the fact that East ranked and West ranked wrestlers were treated as two separate groups and if enough wrestlers from one side received bad losing records, other wrestlers from the same side had to be promoted to replace their slot in the rankings for the next tournament even if their records were not much better. In the Summer 1942 tournament at maegashira 8, he finally got his first top division kachikoshi and also beat yokozuna Haguroyama for his first gold star or kinboshi. He would continue to plague Haguroyama after this, beating him a total of four times as a "maegashira".