You’re 23 years old and a foreigner. But in a land suspicious of both youth and outsiders, you’re squatting on top of the world.
The U.S. ambassador threw a reception in your honor Tuesday night. The press fawns on every push and shove by your 6-foot-8, 462-pound body.
You earn a couple of hundred grand a year, but that’s just for starters. Every time you win a major tournament, you pick up the equivalent of another forty, fifty thousand bucks.
You’ve got a fan club raising all kinds of dough to buy you presents. And businessmen hanker to take you to the most expensive restaurants in the most expensive city in the world, just so they might slip you more envelopes full of cash.
It must be hard to remain humble in the face of this tidal wave of riches. But for Hawaii’s Chad Rowan, a k a Akebono, staying humble is part of the job.
Wait, it’s more than that. For the first foreigner in sumo’s 2,000-year history ever to attain the exalted status of yokozuna or grand champion, it’s the most important part of the job.
Because no Japanese wrestler as he neared the top of the sumo world ever had his hinkaku questioned. Hinkaku is the Japanese word for dignity and, according to some members of the Sumo Association’s promotion council, a prerequisite for promotion to yokozuna.
But it happened last April to Konishiki, another Hawaiian, as he neared yokozuna status, which can come after a wrestler wins two tournaments in a row or two of three with a strong record in between. Writing in Bungei Shunju, Japan’s leading monthly magazine of social and political commentary, a member of the Sumo Association’s promotion council openly questioned whether Konishiki-or any foreigner-could have hinkaku.
Wrote Noboru Kojima, a rikishi (sumo wrestler) has hinkaku if his “entire being exudes self-confidence, self-knowledge and self-control, and he exhibits the proper balance of spirit, technique and strength.”
Even though Konishiki stumbled in his next tournament, the international outrage that greeted those comments set the stage for Akebono’s elevation to yokozuna. Last month, after winning his second straight tournament, Akebono was named yokozuna, a title that lasts for life.
“The Konishiki controversy helped Akebono,” said Andy Adams, editor of Sumo World, a magazine that circulates among sumo’s many English-speaking fans.
“The Sumo Association was very conscious of being called racist, so they probably pushed him up more quickly than they otherwise would have.”
Indeed, Akebono, who achieved the top ranking faster than any other wrestler in sumo history, put his hinkaku on display Tuesday at a packed news conference for foreign reporters, his first since becoming yokozuna. He deflected all questions about the fame and fortune that go with his new status.
“If you’re joining sumo for the money, you shouldn’t do it in the first place,” he said as he lowered his eyes and folded his huge hands in front of his brown and gold dress kimono. “We make enough to live and live comfortably. It’s not for the money.”
This Jackie Robinson of sumo has come a long way in the five years since he first entered the ring. A poor kid from a run-down section of Oahu Island, he started his sumo career after quitting Pacific College, which he had attended on a basketball scholarship.
He quickly realized he’d never make it as a big-time basketball player. And education had become meaningless to him. He never attended classes, but still got passing grades.
On the verge of dropping out, he was introduced to Jesse Kuhaulua, another Hawaiian, who was the first non-Japanese to break into big-time sumo. Kuhaulua, 48, arrived in Japan in 1964 and wrestled for 20 years under the name Takamiyama.
When his career ended, he became the first foreigner to start a beya, or stable for young sumo wrestlers. Four of his current crop of 17 grapplers are non-Japanese. In 1988, Kuhaulua recruited the lanky Chad Rowan and Rowan’s younger brother, who eventually dropped out of sumo because it was too tough.
But not Rowan, who soon took the name Akebono, which means dawn. “He knew nothing about sumo. He was like me-he wanted to see the world,” Kuhaulua recalled. “There were many times that were difficult for him.”
The hardest part was adapting to the spartan world of the beya. Sumo wrestlers live in a common, unheated room, where they rise before dawn and practice for most of the morning.
Novice wrestlers must perform chores for their senior stablemates. They also must learn the deferential language and demeanor that the Japanese use in every senior-junior relationship-especially in the feudal world of sumo.
“I had young kids telling me to scrub the toilet,” Akebono said. “That’s the kind of thing you have to do to make it in sumo.
“For the first half a year after I came from Hawaii, I cried every night,” he recalled. “I thought I was a man, but I found out I was still a baby. What kept me going was knowing if I went home, people would laugh at me.”
The starting pay for sumo wrestlers is little more than an allowance-about $500 a month on top of the room and endless servings of a fish, beef and vegetable stew used to fatten them up.
The cash flows
There are more than 800 sumo wrestlers in Japan. Only the 66 top-ranked grapplers get a salary from the Sumo Association; the leaders make about $200,000 a year. The association also regulates the athletes’ promotional appearances, and in recent years has restricted commercial endorsements and corporate sponsorships.
But just as in Japanese politics, the regulations haven’t stopped the cash from flowing. Most top-ranked wrestlers have support groups made up of leading companies and politicians. The groups put up prize money for each of their favored wrestler’s bouts during a 15-day match or basho in which competitors wrestle each day. The winner of a match takes the whole pot. There are six bashos a year.
“We didn’t join Akebono’s fan club, but we offer prize money for each of his matches every basho,” said Masaru Isaka, a spokesman for Nichiro Corp., a leading producer of canned salmon, crab and scallops whose 80-year-old Akebono brand lines grocery store shelves throughout Japan.
“All the people in our company support Akebono since we share the same name,” Isaka said.
Sumo’s popularity has gone through peaks and valleys in recent decades. Currently it’s riding an unprecedented wave of enthusiasm, largely because of a teenage heartthrob, Takanohana.
The 20-year-old, whose father and uncle were celebrated sumo wrestlers in the 1950s and ’60s, has won admirers for his use of speed and cunning to outmaneuver the brute strength of the several outsized Hawaiians who are now powers in the sport. Adams of Sumo World estimated that Takanohana makes more than $2 million a year from all sources, more than any other wrestler.
However, to the great disappointment of those hoping to keep a foreigner from ascending to sumo’s top rank, he lost to Akebono in the final day of the January basho that gained Akebono his yokozuna status. The match was seen on TV by more than 60 percent of Japanese households.
Upstaged by the loser
Even though he lost, Takanohana dominated the post-fight news. His broken engagement to a fashion model turned actress, Rie Miyazawa (he wanted her to give up her career, but her mother didn’t want to lose her meal ticket), got bigger headlines in the sports tabloids than Akebono’s ascension to yokozuna status.
“I was disappointed in that,” said the outspoken Kuhaulua. “Usually the yokozuna gets all the attention. I’m not saying there’s racism, it’s just this kid is very popular with the Japanese press.”
None of that worries Akebono, whose mastery of hinkaku is uncanny for an American kid who five years ago was told he didn’t have the body for sumo and admits he’d probably be “a bum on a beach in Hawaii” if he hadn’t made it.
“Right now, I feel more Japanese than I do American,” he told reporters Tuesday. “People look at me not as an American or a Japanese, but as a sumo rikishi.
“I’m proud to be an American,” he quickly added, “but because of my job, I feel more Japanese.”
