>>42788
In practice: Two sides of the sumo hall. You'll notice that the wrestlers enter and leave the ring in two different ways - those are the east entrance and west entrance. (You'll notice that there's actually four corridors - but two are not used by wrestlers.) The ring entering ceremony is also performed each side separately. This however has no meaning for the matchmaking; bouts are not limited to one wrestler east vs. one wrestler west.

The sides east and west are decided before each tournament; wrestlers with the same numerical rank but one east and the other west are considered to having the same power ranking. However at the very top (yokozuna, ozeki, sekiwake and komosubi not so much) where differences are not that small, the wrestler considered stronger is normally placed in the east slot.

Hakuho is practically constantly Yokozuna east.