TOKYO -- Akebono, sumo's first foreign-born grand champion, retired on Monday, ending a career which saw the former Hawaiian high-school basketball star not only excel in the sport but adapt to the ultra-conservative sumo world.
|  | | Akebono, here performing a ring-purification ceremony, was the first foreign-born sumo wrestler to reach the sport's highest rank of yokozuna. |
The yokozuna, or grand champion, tendered his resignation to the Japan Sumo Association, citing injuries, including knee and back problems, which repeatedly forced the wrestler to be sidelined from tournaments.
"Before, I would try to withstand the pain, but now it is unbearable even when not sumo wrestling" Akebono told the news conference at which he announced his retirement.
Akebono quickly rose through the ranks in an illustrious 13-year career, fighting with devastating pushes that took advantage of his 6-foot-9, 514-pound frame to become in 1993 the sport's 64th yokozuna in the shortest time since entering the ring.
The Hawaiian-born colossus, whose name means "dawn" in
Japanese, has 11 career championships under his belt, the last
one in November when he took the Kyushu Grand Sumo Championship
with a record of 14 wins and only one loss.
"I've lost the motivation to rise to the top again and my
body will not move the way I want it to any longer," he said.
But in sumo, it takes more than just the fighting in the ring to climb to the top, and it was no different for Akebono.
Born Chad Rowan, the 31-year-old Akebono first knocked on the doors of his stablemaster Azumazeki when he was only 18.
He knew no Japanese then, and had to adapt culturally to the harsh, tradition-bound sumo world which even repels many Japanese teenage aspirants and where seniority is paramount.
"When I joined, I was 18 and I had 15-, 16-year-old kids telling me to scrub the toilet and cook the rice," he once said.
Those were the things that he had to learn to do if he wanted to succeed. He now speaks fluent Japanese and has become a Japanese citizen.
"Sumo is a sport where you live the sport ... it's not like baseball," he also once said, adding that at first, he cried almost every night.
Unlike his contemporaries in other professional sports, he said he was not in sumo for the money, but for the respect.
"The way I look at a yokozuna -- it's not your salary. Before me there's only been 63 other guys who have achieved the same thing ... it's just the respect you get," he told reporters when he was elevated to grand champion.
And that sort of modesty was what won the approval from the sternest overseers of Japan's national sport.
For years, a foreigner holding the coveted title of yokozuna seemed a taboo, and another U.S.-born wrestler had failed at breaking the barrier just less than a year before Akebono did.
Now-retired Konishiki, a fellow Hawaiian, appeared well
placed to win promotion to yokozuna in 1992 after several
impressive tournament showings.
But influential sumo elders vetoed his advancement, making it clear they felt the hulking Hawaiian lacked "hinkaku," or dignity, deemed necessary for a worthy grand champion.
A deeply wounded Konishiki protested, calling sumo officials
"racist," and commentators spoke of a deep-rooted taboo against
admitting a foreigner to the pinnacle of the ancient sport.
Whether by nature or as lesson from Konishiki's experience, Akebono remained a man of few words.
Asked about the issue of "hinkaku" when he was promoted to yokozuna, the wrestler said it was not something one described, but something that one showed by his actions.
While Akebono will leave the clay ring, he has the chance to become a stablemaster as he gained Japanese citizenship in 1996.
If he had not naturalized, he would only have been able to remain with the sumo association for five years.
And in place of Akebono will be Musashimaru, another U.S.-born yokozuna, who has proven himself worthy of the grand champion mantle by winning eight titles.
Musashimaru nearly captured the tournament which ended on Sunday, but lost to fellow yokozuna Takanohana in a championship playoff. Akebono skipped the tournament due to his injuries.
In sumo, two wrestlers try to force each other to touch the ground or to stop out of an
elevated clay ring. There are six sumo tournaments each year. Wrestlers face a different opponent on each of the tournaments' 15 days, and the one with the fewest losses is declared the winner.
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