He was born in the city of Hirosaki (as was Wakanosato). Hōchiyama was a member of Kizukuri High School sumo club (also attended by Mainoumi) and he made his professional debut in March 2000. He joined the Nakadachi stable set up by former komusubi Ryōgoku, which was subsequently renamed Sakaigawa stable.
Hōchiyama took the jonokuchi championship with a perfect 7-0 record in his first tournament as a rikishi and he earned promotion to sandanme in November 2000 with another 7-0 score. However he found his opponents in the third makushita division much more difficult to deal with and his progress slowed. He narrowly missed out on promotion to the second highest jūryō division a number of times, recording 3-4 marks at makushita 1 in July 2004 and November 2005. After 24 tournaments in the third division he finally achieved promotion in January 2006 when a 4-3 score at makushita 4 was enough to reach jūryō. He became the second member of his stable to reach sekitori status, following Iwakiyama, and the first to do it progressing through all the professional sumo divisions, Iwakiyama having made his debut in makushita.
Hōchiyama reached the top makuuchi division in only in three tournaments, after winning the jūryō championship in July 2006 with a 13-2 record. He could only manage five wins in his top division debut in September 2006 and was demoted back to jūryō. He reappeared in makuuchi in May 2007 but after two more make-koshi or losing scores he fell back to the second division once again in September of that year. He just missed out on immediate promotion back to the top division after recording seven wins against eight losses at the rank of jūryō 1. However, restricted by diabetes, a disastrous performance of 2-13 at the rank of jūryō 6 in the March 2008 tournament (which was his sixth consecutive losing score) saw him demoted to the third division for May.

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