The ranking board 番付
Three boards instead of one, and a hundred names on each. Why fiftieth place matters more than tenth.
Edo printed a 番付 ranking sheet for everything - sumo wrestlers, restaurants, hot springs, calligraphers. One sheet, everybody on it, the great names at the top in the biggest brush. The board is that sheet.
Three boards, not one
A single leaderboard only ever flatters whoever started first. So there are three, and they measure genuinely different things:
- 修得 Mastery - Every reading and meaning you hold, counted by how firmly you hold it. Never falls.
- 祭 This season - Points earned since the season turned. Wiped four times a year, so the board is always winnable.
- 連続 Streak - Consecutive days studied. The one board that owes nothing to how long ago you joined.
The point of three is that they disagree. Somebody four hundredth by lifetime mastery can be first by streak, and that is not a consolation prize - it is a different achievement, fairly measured. Mastery rewards the long haul. The season resets so a newcomer can win something real. Streak owes nothing at all to when you joined.
A hundred names
Each board lists a hundred places rather than ten. Tenth is out of reach for almost everyone and so motivates almost no one; fiftieth is a real fight with a real neighbour, and the gap to them is printed on the sheet where you can see it.
There is deliberately no board for the road. A step on the road is a mastery point, so ranking it separately would rank the same people in the same order and call it a second accomplishment.
Resting travelers step off
While you are on a rest 湯治 you give up your place until you return. The board is a picture of who is travelling now, and holding a seat on it while resting would quietly make it a picture of something else.
Your streak survives the rest. Only the seat is given up, and it is waiting when you come back.
Nothing on it is for sale
No position can be bought, boosted or protected. EdoQuest+ puts a 極 mark beside a subscriber's name and moves them not one place. What is shown is your display name, your companion and your figure - never your email. Choose the name accordingly.
One honest asterisk, because it belongs on this page more than any other: a plan opens the daily door twice where the free road opens it once, and a traveler studying twice the characters earns mastery faster. Nobody's figure is inflated and no rank is sold, but a subscriber walks the road at twice the pace, and over a year that shows on the board. We would rather write it here than let you work it out.