By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer

When Japan played host to the 1998 Winter Olympics and needed a symbolic figure to represent the country in the opening ceremonies, it chose Chad Haaheo Rowan, a former Kaiser High basketball player turned sumo grand champion.

A FOUR-PART SERIES TODAY: Akebono's role and a primer on sumo TOMORROW: Akebono's long road to glory THURSDAY: With Akebono's retirement, only one active sumotori from Hawai'i remains FRIDAY: What does Akebono do now?

Rowan's journey from Waimanalo to the worldwide stage at the Nagano Games underlined one of the remarkable sagas in sports, an American's precedent-shattering climb atop Japan's centuries-old, tradition-bound national sport.

When Rowan received the promotion to yokozuna in 1993, the first foreigner in the homogenous society to hold the top rank in the sport of emperors, it was the rough equivalent of somebody from Japan winning the Heisman Trophy.

The 32-year-old Rowan will officially retire Saturday (Hawai'i time), ending a history-making 13-year career before what is expected to be a near-capacity crowd in Tokyo's 11,000-seat Ryogoku Kokugikan, the national sports hall.

Amid the crowd of regular fans, ambassadors of several nations and his contemporaries, Rowan will end the competitive career of the man known as Akebono, a ring name that appropriately translates to "dawn," for one who brought a new era to this most traditional of sports.

Akebono performed a ceremony in the ring in his debut as a yokozuna on Jan. 31, 1993. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

Rowan won 11 tournament championships and posted a 566-198 record before announcing his retirement in January, the result of chronic knee problems.

"I never thought of myself as a star," the 6-foot-8, 515-pound Akebono has said. "I've just been very fortunate. Somebody up above in the clouds was with me."

Jesse Kuhaulua, his stablemaster and coach, said: "What the Japanese people really like about Akebono is that he has worked very, very hard."

Indeed. Among the multitudes who have competed in sumo, Akebono was just the 64th to reach yokozuna in what is referred to as Japan's "kokugi" or national sport.

Mist-shrouded legend has it that the origin of Japan once rode on the outcome of a sumo match among the gods.

In ancient times, matches were part of harvest celebrations and, as early as the eighth century, were reported to be part of imperial court activities.

When Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Japan in 1854, the shogunate used the sight of the massive sumotori in an attempt to intimidate the newcomers, calling on the wrestlers to carry large sacks of rice and provisions to the ships and perform exhibitions for the crew.

In modern times, the popularity of the sport has ebbed and flowed, usually rivaling professional baseball for the title of most popular spectator sport. The six tournaments a year are carried on radio and television. A box is maintained at the Kokugikan for the royal family.

Until Kuhaulua left Happy Valley, Maui, for Japan in 1964, adapting to the spartan lifestyle and rising through the ranks of wrestlers who numbered in the hundreds, it was widely believed that foreigners could never last, let alone become successful at a high level in the sport.

Kuhaulua persevered, learned the language, the lifestyle and the sport, and became the first foreigner to win a tournament, capturing the 1972 Nagoya Basho. Though Kuhaulua ascended to sekiwake, the sport's third-highest rank, it was assumed that yokozuna was unreachable for a non-Japanese.

As snow fell at the Meiji Jingu, Akebono was honored during his promotion to yokozuna. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

Nearly 100 foreign recruits coming from 14 countries have attempted to follow in Kuhaulua's wide footsteps but none won a tournament until Nanakuli's Salevaa Atisanoe, who competed as Konishiki, captured the Kyushu Basho in 1989.

Atisanoe, despite three championships, eight runners-up finishes and six years at the second-highest rank of ozeki, never earned promotion to yokozuna.

Konishiki's inability to secure the precedent-shattering promotion became an international incident when quotes attributed to him blamed the Japan Sumo Association's reluctance on racism.

Sumo officials said he lacked consecutive tournament championships, a frequent though not universally applied standard. Purists said he lacked "hinkaku (dignity)." Critics of the sumo association said he lacked only nationality.

A year later, Rowan, a former Hawai'i Pacific University basketball player and protege of Kuhaulua, compiled a 27-3 record over two tournaments for consecutive championships and won promotion.

Amid a gently falling snow at Tokyo's Meiji Jingu shrine in late January, 1993, Rowan was officially installed as the 64th yokozuna in the sport's history and first of foreign ancestry.