Kokonoe stable
As a youngster and student, Kinoshita was active in swimming and also judo, in which he has a black belt. However, he also participated in sumo less regularly, and in his sixth year of primary school he reached the best sixteen in a national children's amateur sumo tournament. He had visited a Kokonoe stable event in Kyūshū in his primary school years, and his older brother Chiyomaru was already a wrestler with the stable, so upon his graduation from middle school an invitation was arranged through intermediaries and he joined his brother as a member of this stable.