Akebono Story 1

Akebono Story 2

Akebono Story 3

Akebono Story 4

AKEBONO IN HIS OWN WORDS

The Life and Times of a Sumo Giant by Fred Varcoe - TJT 2/12/00

Q. Go overa typical day in the life of Akebono

A. I get up at 5:30 in the morning and get to practice at about 7. I come down into the practice area at about 8:30, practice till about 10 or 10:30 and take a shower.

Our first meal of the day is about 11:30 and after that I take care of all the responsibilities I have outside. If I have nothing to do, then I go to the gym and work out. The evenings I basically spend at home.

Q. You live at Yokata Air Base in Fussa - during tournaments in Tokyo do you return home every day to your wife or do you stay in town?

A. I stay in Tokyo.

Q. Is that tough?

A. Yes, it is, but that's the sacrifice my wife makes. As the wife of a yokozuna, I know it's real tough on her.

Q. What kind of exercises do you do?

A. I try to work out as frequently as possible in the gym. Being big and heavy you can't do too much stuff, so what they have me doing is stuff in the water, in the pool.

At one point, they even had me holding my breath under water and swimming the length of the deep end of the pool. They said it was to help me get aerobic stammia.

When you wrestle sumo you're supposed to wrestle with one breath because when you breathe out, you lose all your power.

Q. What about your intake of food.

A. When we're practicing, we basically have two meals, lunch and dinner, but it depends. You basically just eat when you're hungry.

Q. Former ozeki Kirishima, a relative sumo lightweight, says he ate five times a day.

A. For him it's different; I just breathe and I gain weight. Every breath I take in is like 500 grams.

Q. Is your weight ever a problem?

A. Getting into my elderly age in the sport, it does become a hinderance once in a while, just in everyday basic life.

In your early 20s, you can do anything, you're Superman; you start reaching your 30s and it don't go that way any more.

Q. What was your main reasons for taking Japanese citizenship?

A. In order for you to become oyakata in this world, to have your own stable, you have to be a Japanese citizen. I've learned a lot being in sumo - good stuff, bad stuff - and if possible, if I'm able to do it, I would really like to pass on what I've learned to the next generation in some form. So just for a sense of security I took Japanese citizenship.

Q. Did your mom object?

A. When I changed my citizenship, the first person I asked was my mom. She said: "That's the road you've picked, so it's your decision. Even if you change your citizenship, you're still my son. Just because you've changed your citizenship, it doesn't mean the person has changed."

Q. Do you think you might be able to take over from your stablemaster Azumazeki?

A. I have no idea. I don't know if I want to be a stablemaster, but in some form I want to be connected with sumo and be able to teach.

Q. Any chance of going down Konishiki's road to television fame?

A. I doubt it; I cannot do what he's done.

Q. So what do you think you'll do after you've hung up your mawashi.

A. The first thing is I'm going to sleep the first week after I retire, not even get out of bed, just sleep. I'm going to hibernate.

Q. Will you opt to stay in Japan, Hawaii or both?

A. Japan - I don't think I'll be able to go back home and live.

Q. How's you Japanese?

A. It's enough to order udon or sushi - just the necessities.

Q. You say you've gained a lot from being in sumo, what exactly?

A. First of all, coming away from home, you learn how to grow up real fast. Being at home, your mom is always there to take care of you if something goes wrong.

When you come to sumo it's a man's world. You do everything: cooking, cleaning, washing. For me the biggest point was it made me grow up real fast.

Another thing was I got to do something (become yokozuna) that up until now only 67 other people have had a chance to do out of how many hundreds of years of sumo.

And the other thing is I got to see the world whne most people are lucky if they even leave their rock. I thought Hawaii was big growing up. You catch the bus from where I live to downtown, that's like one hour.

Q. Any particular highlights from any of your overseas trips?

A. One thing I remember is me and Musashimaru being country hicks from Hawaii in France. We went to the Tour d'Argent in France.

Our dream was to go to the most expensive place and eat caviar. We went in and we sat down an we order caviar.

You're sitting there and you know these guys don't know how much to bring out; it's the first time they've had sumo wrestlers there.

They bring it out on a big plate with a cover on top. We're thinking maybe we'll just get a little bit in the middle, but they opened it and there's caviar all over the place: a mountain of caviar and two dummies sitting there trying to eat the whole thing.

We don't want to be rude, so we're trying to finish all the caviar. We had like shovels for spoons and then everything you looked at started looking black, everything looked like caviar and you get black spots in front of your eyee.

I never had caviar after that.

Q. What's the favorite place you've been to?

A. (Deadpan) London (bursts out laughing).

London was good. It's nice we've been all over the place, like Spain, Austria, Germany, Canada, Australia. Even my first trip to (continental) America was doing sumo when we went to San Jose.

Q. Is it hard to go out for a social evening, or does it just prove irritating with people pointing at you, coming up to you and disturbing you?

A. I just like being around people, so I don't really care. Sometimes you get frustrated with people so you just tell them "leave me alone" or "I'm trying to eat dinner" or something, but that's all part of the job, you've got to be able to cope with it.

It would be very strange if you got up one morning and nobody knew who you were.

Q. Do you have many friends in sumo?

A. You have people you started with and the people you practice with all the time, and the people from Hawaii tend to be closer to each other, but now there's only two of us.

Q. What about Takanohana and Wakanohana?

A. We sit down an talk, but it's not like we're best friends or nothing.

Q. Apart from your fellow yokozuna, do you have any other great rivals?

A. When you get up on the ring, every one you fight is your rival. You don't want to lose to anybody.

Q. Do you feel pressure from the young guns trying to make a name for themselves?

A. Now I know how the yokozuna felt when we first came up.

When you're young and dumb, you don't think of anything. But as a yokozuna it's: "What if I lose to this young kid? They're going to write about me in the paper." But in order to carry on the sumo tradition, every so many years there's got to be a changing of the guard.

Q. Sumo's been tarnished recently by claims from ex-komusubi Itai that some fights were rigged. He particularly targeted yourself, your stablemaster and Kotonishiki. Does he have a particular ax to grind against these people? What's the story here?

A. I have no idea - I'd like to ask him myself. I've never met this guy, I've never talked to this guy before - in fact when I was first coming up, he was already retiring. Most of the people who are wrestling now don't know the guy.

Q. He claims that at one stage, 80 percent of the bouts were fixed.

A. Shit, if that was the case then we don't need to practice.

Q. You performed at the opening ceremony of the Nagano Olympic Games - was that a big moment for you?

A. Very much a big moment. It was big for me, but it was a lot bigger for my hometown and my parents. Being from Hawaii, who the hell would think that their son would be opening up the Olympics.

Q. There's been talk of sumo attempting to get Olympic status. Do you think that's a good thing?

A. If you're looking at it just sportswise, yeah, it would do very good internationally, but for us the sumo profession is more a lifestyle. If you take the sport out of Japan, it will just become a regular sport.

Q. What have been the other highlights of your career?

A. Getting your first tournament win, that's something you never forget.

But for me the biggest highlight of my career was the first bout I ever wrestled with Takanohana. That was like 12 years ago. We were two young guns with short hair wrestling at 7 o'clock in the morning, nobody in the statnds!

Q. Who won?

A. (Smiles) That was the happiest day of my life (laughs).

Q. Do you enjoy fighting Takanohana?

A. Yeah.

Q. What about your fellow Hawaiians?

A. In the beginning, it's hard; the first time I wrestled Konishiki, this guy you look up to, was very hard; it was very uncomfortable.

When we joined he woul take care of us, take us out, teach us. We were always by his side.

And then, all of a sudden, you're up on the ring fighting him. In practice he beats you up and throws you all over the place and then it's like, what are you doing up here?

I couldn't look him straight in the eye.

Q. Did you win?

A. I was lucky enough to win that bout.

Q. Did it get easier?

A. Once you get over that first bout, it's all right. You realize that's your job.

Q. Did you have a close relationship with him?

A. Konishiki was like a big brother that I never had when I got to Japan. He's a real family-oriented person so even if he don't know who are, if he just knows you're from Hawaii, you were under his wing.

For us the age gap was like five, six years and when I joined he was already ozeki, and he was like a godfather with all his little hitmen.

Q. Do you want to be like that?

A. Oh yeah, every day.

Q. As you're become older and more senior in the sumo world, has your relationship with your oyakata, Azumazeki, changed or is it still very much the master and the student?

A. Before I got married it was still master and student, but since I got married and I have a child, I tend to think that both of us have changed a lot. We can communicate now more openly. It's easier to talk to him now.

Q. Are you surprised by what you've achieved?

A. Right now, I cannot grasp what I do - maybe when I'm 50 or 60, when I'm retired.

Right now, being in the sport, I just do what I like doing, I do what I get paid for doing - I love the sport.

It's a very good sport, it's a very good lifestyle and I learned a lot being here.

Q. Is trying to gain your 10th title a big thing for you?

A. It's big, but to me, I try my best every tournament. If I can win it, I'll take it. All I want to do when I do plan on going out is for nobody to say I never tried. If I win 10, hey, that's good, but if not, nobody can erease what I've done so far.

Akebono Snippets

• "They have a real funny way of showing their love, especially in this sport.   The way they think is if they pick on you and beat you up, that is the way they show their love for you.   I think that is really fucked up."

• quote - July 1998   ©kawika
  

  "Ho, gotta write one WHOLE CHAPTA 'bout cousin Nate, brah."

• quote - May 12, 1999   ©kawika
  

  "He really had it today!!   The looks, the attitude-everything!!   He blew his way thru like an express train-like the good old days.   Is this Koenkai -thing working already??   Has he been told?   He better look out..He might surprise everyone.."

Hawaiian Rowan To Be 'Taro Akebono'

Friday, November 21, 1997

Konishiki retires

He was the first foreign-born wrestler to reach the sport's elite ozeki level

Kyodo News Service

FUKUOKA, Japan - Former ozeki Konishiki, the first foreign-born wrestler to reach sumo's second-highest rank, will retire from Japan's traditional sport, stablemaster Takasago said yesterday. The 612-pound Konishiki, formerly of Nanakuli, will retire after the Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament, which ends Sunday. He will submit his letter of resignation to the Japan Sumo Association and assume the sumo elder's name of Sanoyama. Konishiki, 33, formerly Salevaa Atisanoe, started his career in July 1982 and thundered through the junior divisions to reach the elite makuuchi division two years later. The former "Meat Bomb" won three Emperor's Cups, but never satisfied the Yokozuna Deliberation Council's requirements for promotion to grand champion status.

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Meat Bomb

Konishiki, the quarter-ton Sumo wrestler from Hawaii, has set off an explosion of new interest -- and controvery -- in the hidebound national sport of Japan

By Franz Lidz

Once again Japan is threatened by a mountainous marauder who mashes everything in his path. Once again the behemoth's thunderous footfalls have kindled fire storms everywhere, from the backstreets of Osaka to Atami Castle in Nagoya. And once again the overlords of this island nation are conspiring to stop him. Only this time the enemy is not a 50,000-ton, flame-belching sauropod named Godzilla.This time he's a human being, a sumo wrestler known as Meat Bomb. Godzilla, you may recall, was a nuclear freak who washed ashore after being loosed by American scientists. Meat Bomb, whose real name is Salevaa Atisanoe, but who fights in Japan under the alias Konishiki, is a Hawaiian-born Boogie- board freak who caught the sumo wave while hanging loose at Waikiki. "When I left home for Tokyo in 1982, I didn't know what sumo was," says the first non-Japanese to breach the top ranks of this medieval backwater of sport. "In fact, I didn't even know Godzilla had been to Japan. In those days I was into true-crime police dramas, like Hawaii Five-0." There are subtle differences between the two. Konishiki (pronounced ko- NEESH-kee) is scrupulously polite. He bows, he defers to his superiors, he comports himself with solemnity. "Godzilla was gloriously rude," observes Michael Browning, a Far East correspondent for The Miami Herald. "He's the one visitor who can enter a Japanese home without taking his shoes off -- because he has no shoes and usually comes in through the roof." And while Godzilla hated high-tension wires, Konishiki revels in high-tension face-offs. But, as Browning notes, "both have guts to spare."

When it comes to guts, no athlete can match Konishiki. At 6 ft. 1 in. and 580 pounds, he is roughly square. A veritable waterfall of flab, he weighs about 175 pounds more than the typical sumo wrestler, 100 more than his chunkiest rival and 50 more than the average Japanese household. "It's a deceptive 580," says Konishiki. "Fifty pounds of it are always jiggling." Flesh, great bulging rolls of it, hangs off him by the bucketful. It ripples from his chest, beetles from his breasts, wobbles around his legs, arms and thighs. Konishiki's belly is so vast that you could hide a Butterball turkey in his navel. His frame appears to move in sections: If he turns too quickly, the rest of him takes a few seconds to catch up. At a time when Japanese leaders are criticized for not importing American goods, an American import has risen near the summit of their national sport. Konishiki is the first foreigner to reach the rank of ozeki (champion). He has won two of the last three bimonthly bashos (sumo tournaments) and finished a respectable third in the other -- a run that would normally be enough to tip the scales in favor of his elevation to yokozuna (grand champion). But Konishiki's huge success has posed a giant dilemma for the sport's ruling body, the cabalistic Sumo Kyokai. No gaijin (as foreigners are called) has ever been honored as a yokozuna, and the Kyokai is reluctant to set a precedent with Konishiki. The council met following Konishiki's victory in March at the basho in Osaka and ruled out further consideration of his elevation until after the two-week tournament in Tokyo that began on Sunday. Sure, Konishiki had gone 13-2 at the last basho. But his two losses, council members said, were ugly. "We want to make doubly sure that Konishiki is worthy to be a grand champion," explained Hideo Ueda, a sumo official. "Therefore, we decided to wait for another tournament." The yokozuna sits atop a multilayered hierarchy of about 800 wrestlers. "Yokozuna are immortals," says Konishiki reverently. "It's like getting into the Hall of Fame. You stay there for life, man." The induction of a yokozuna, something that has happened only 62 times since the birth of modern sumo in the 1750s, involves an elaborate three-hour ceremony on the grounds of the venerable Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. Though other wrestlers move up and down the rankings according to their results, a yokozuna can never be demoted. But he is pretty much obliged to step down when he begins to lose more bouts than he wins. This usually happens in his mid-30's. Then the wrestler gets his topknot cut and withdraws to a lethargic O-shaped old age.

Because there is now no active yokozuna -- the last one retired last Friday because of injuries -- the Kyokai is desperate to shore up the sport's top rank by naming others. "Like it or not, sumo is show biz," says Lynn Matsuoka, a Tokyo-based illustrator of sumo books. "Yokozuna are not only part of the pageantry, they're big box office." Based on his record alone, Konishiki is the leading candidate. But the Kyokai is torn between taking sumo to a wider audience and not wanting to dilute what it regards as a living heritage.

Yokozuna are appointed partly for winning major events, partly for producing consistently high scores. But there's another, more elusive requirement: hinkaku, an innate and somewhat mystical aura of dignity that many Japanese find wanting in Westerners. Japanese chauvinists oppose the idea of conferring the honor of yokozuna on a non-Japanese. In a recent issue of the monthly Bungei Shunju, novelist Noboru Kojima argued that the promotion of Konishiki "could lead to renunciation of the identity of Japanese spiritual culture." The piece was titled "We Do Not Need a Foreign Yokozuna.

" But sumo insiders have an additional objection. Konishiki, they say, has transformed an ancient form of stylized combat into a survival of the fattest. The rules of sumo competition are simple: You win by forcing your opponent to the ground or outside the 15-foot circle of rice straw enclosing the ring. You lose if any part of your body other than the soles of your feet -- even your hair -- touches the floor. Bouts are generally over in a few seconds; very few last more than 20. A wrestler of Konishiki's size and strength, therefore, has an overwhelming advantage. But "if strength were the only requirement for yokozuna," protests one sumo official, "then why wouldn't we just get lions, bears and elephants to fight?"

Konishiki, who arrived in Japan knowing little Japanese but learned to speak it flawlessly, takes the critical jabs philosophically, saying, "It's their sport, and I don't want to fight the system. The best I can do is rack up the wins. If I keep winning, they'll have to do something."

About the only action the Kyokai has taken is to reprimand Konishiki for something he -- or an impostor -- may or may not have said. In a story on April 20, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan's leading financial newspaper, quoted Konishiki on the subject of his denial of grand-champion status: "Strictly speaking, this is racism." The following day, The New York Times reported that in a telephone interview Konishiki said, "If I was Japanese . . . I would already be a yokozuna."

The remarks nearly sparked an international incident. Japan's prime minister, Kiichi Miyazawa, defended the Kyokai's selection process. Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe fretted that Konishiki's accusation might further strain Japan's relations with the U.S. Noting that Americans are sensitive to racial discrimination, Watanabe said, "I would like to ask that this problem develop no further."

It didn't. On April 21, after being summoned before the Kyokai and ordered to "become more humble," Konishiki denied making either statement. A tearful Meat Bomb claimed he had been "misinterpreted" by the Nihon Keizai reporter ("If I said it," Konishiki said, "I didn't mean it the way he wrote it") and asserted that a prankish apprentice had impersonated him to the Times. ("I didn't know what was happening," Konishiki said. "I was in the shower.")

Konishiki's younger sister, Kahau Sunia, is less diplomatic. "He should tell the Japanese he's not a foreigner," she says. "After all, they already own everything in Hawaii."

The small lacquered flute is made from the wing bone of a heron. It emerges from its sheath honey-colored and gemlike. Konishiki plays a Japanese melody. The tone is pure and limpid, as plaintively beautiful as the flight of the heron.

A beatific look comes over Konishiki. His face is round and pleasantly tough, with a slight ironic twist at the edge of his smile. He wears that smile whether he's barreling opponents out of the sumo ring or warbling Japanese pop songs to his reedy bride, Sumika, a fashion model who weighs about as much as his elbow. (He proposed last summer by saying, "Let's work together toward yokozuna.")

Their wedding in Tokyo in February drew more than 1,000 guests, including many of the country's top politicians and businessmen. A Japanese TV network anted up nearly half a million dollars for broadcasting rights. This real-life Beauty and the Beast knocked the Winter Olympics off the air for two hours. "In no other sport in the world do you get this kind of attention," Konishiki says. His voice is surprisingly soft, coming from a man the size of the Imperial Palace.

Konishiki's every move -- as ponderous as it might be -- is fodder for gossip columnists. "Journalism in Japan is a rat race, and journalists are a bunch of rats," Konishiki says contemptuously. "I'm constantly getting quoted by reporters who never interviewed me. The rest ask me the same asinine questions: What do you and your wife talk about? What is it like being married to you? Do you want to have a boy or a girl?" The question that never gets asked is, Do they or don't they? "We do," says Konishiki slyly. We'll leave the rest to your imagination.

According to the popular press, Konishiki celebrated his 28th birthday last December by downing 120 bottles of beer, 10 quarts of tequila and 10 shots of whiskey. "That's ridiculous," protests Konishiki. "I don't drink whiskey.

" So what about the beer and the tequila?

"That's only partly true. The 10 quarts of tequila is right, but I drank more than 120 bottles of beer." Did he get Meat Bombed?

"No, but the next morning I felt like I had 23 hearts, and all 23 were in my head, pounding."

The Japanese public thirsts for this kind of information. And most of the time Konishiki doesn't mind dispensing it. "I'm treated like royalty," he says. "I'm a walking god."

Old women and young children rub him for good luck like some giant Buddha. Teenage girls swoon at the sight of his huge haunches. Konishiki masks line the shelves of Tokyo toy stores. A fan club gave him an apron with a diamond not quite as big as a Ritz cracker to wear in sumo's lengthy prematch ceremonies. It seems clear that Konishiki is the biggest reason for the sumomania currently sweeping Japan. All six of this year's bashos have sold out well in advance, including the three in Tokyo's 12,000-seat Kokugikan stadium. Ringside seats bring scalpers more than $4,000 apiece. Paychecks for the wrestlers are equally fat, and sumo wannabes are flooding into Japan from all over the world. The Kyokai pays Konishiki a percentage of tournament gate receipts, which adds up to about $100,000 a year, but he makes at least twice that much from exhibitions and prize money, and still more from endorsements -- which comes in handy in a city as expensive as Tokyo. "I'd love to make millions of dollars like the American ballplayers in Japan," Konishiki says, "but I guess that's part of the discipline in sumo. You take what you get." It was Hawaiian sumo wrestler Jesse Kuhaulua, the first non-Japanese to win a basho in the top division (in 1972), who brought Konishiki to Japan. Now 19 Hawaiians wrestle there (and one of Konishiki's older brothers, Junior, competes in Japan in something called shoot boxing, a cross between street fighting and kick boxing). None of the Hawaiian sumo wrestlers approaches Konishiki's dimensions. The closest is Akebono, a 6 ft. 8 in. giant trained by Kuhaulua. But Akebono, though an impressive 450 pounds, lacks Konishiki's advantageously low center of gravity.

Konishiki's Jovian girth makes him practically immovable. But it also raises concerns about his health. Konishiki makes light of the weight issue. "My only regret is that I can't fit into the rides at the Tokyo Disneyland," he says. "And when I go to a movie, I've got to sit in the aisle."

Would slimming down -- if that's the phrase -- hurt his game? "I try not to go all psycho about it," Konishiki says, "but it probably wouldn't hurt to lose 70 or 80 pounds."

Kuhaulua disagrees. "Sumo wrestlers depend on their weight," he says. "If they lose any, they lose a sense of themselves. Some have lost careers after losing weight. It's a mental thing. What worries me more about Konishiki is the possibility of injury. Big men like us are slow to heal."

Kuhaulua is saying this while lying on a futon at a training stable in Osaka. His head propped up by towels, the 400-pounder looks as immobile as Jabba the Hutt, and nearly as grotesque. He has been in this position for most of the last 10 days. "I turned my ankle," he rasps. A blow to his larynx in his early sumo years left his voice sounding like dry toast being scraped.

On the wall is a poster composed by one of Kuhaulua's Japanese proteges. Its inspirational message reads:

PLEASE, THE BOSS
DON'T EAT! MEAT, FISH LIKE TUNA
EAT MUCH! VEGETABLE, FRUIT, TOFU
GO FOR A WALK!
DON'T GO TO HAVE A DINNER
KEEP YOUR LIFE

"I know nothing about nutrition," Konishiki tells a visitor to his parents' modest home on Oahu. "When you're raised in a family that's barely making it through life, you eat whatever's in front of you." The visitor takes a step back.

Konishiki is the eighth of nine children of Lautoa Atisanoe and his wife, Talafaaiva. Lautoa, a thickset fellow with a perpetually tired expression, brought his family from Samoa, where he had been a schoolteacher, to Oahu in 1959 and got a job as a naval rigger. He was determined to give his children, who would eventually include Salevaa (nicknamed Sale), more than an eighth- grade education. The Atisanoes lived in a Samoan community on the leeward side of the island. They were poor in a Polynesian way. Everyone slept on mats in a communal room and showered outdoors beneath the banana trees. Lautoa had been a "high talking chief" in his village in Samoa, and once installed in Hawaii he built a church out of scrap wood. "The family had a deep sense of respect for protocol, ritual and etiquette," says Earlene Albano, Sale's sixth-grade teacher in Nanakuli. "I think that's why Sale adapted so well to Japan."

Sale grew up fat but strong. By age 11 he weighed 180 pounds. "He was intimidating to look at," says Albano, "but he never intimidated anyone."

No one intimidated him, either. "We used helmets and shoulder pads when we played football on the street," says Sale's former classmate Darrin Zablan. "But nothing fit Sale, so he just wore himself."

At Honolulu's University Laboratory High, Sale made a name for himself -- Big Sale -- as the school's undisputed champ in the bench press (550 pounds) and squat powerlift (600 pounds). He also played noseguard on the football team. Albano's son played for a rival school. "What do you do when Sale hits you?" she once asked her son. "You bounce, Ma," he said.

Too slow for college ball, Sale considered a career as an undercover cop, as if ex-noseguards of his size could move around incognito. "You know," he says, "like on a SWAT team, running through doors, banging heads." He pauses. "It's not too late, is it?"

A week before his graduation from high school, a scout sent by Kuhaulua spotted Sale on the beach, cutting class. "No thanks," said Sale when the scout told him about sumo. "I don't have the stomach for fighting." "Oh, but you do," said the scout.

"Forget it," said Sale.

The scout persisted, coming back two more times. He told Sale that Kuhaulua was due in Honolulu any day, and the scout could introduce them. "He's a celebrity in Hawaii," Konishiki says. "So I figured, why not?" "The deal is to just go there," Kuhaulua told Sale. "Once you're there, it grows on you. " Over his parents' objections, Sale sallied forth. "Trip was free," he says. "How could I lose?" He was then a lithe 380 pounds.

Kuhaulua apprised his charge of sumo's hardships. "I had 20 years of them," Kuhaulua says. "The moment I arrived from the States in 1964, I felt blind, deaf and extremely dumb. I could only talk to two or three people. And there was still a lot of resentment left over from World War II." Kuhaulua made enormous efforts to fit in. "Trying to live like the Japanese was really tough, man," he says. "I had to learn their culture, their life-style and their language, and to accept their attitude toward foreigners." Kuhaulua fought under the ring name of Takamiyama, which means High Mountain. He reached seikwake, the third-highest level in sumodom. But he never challenged for elevation to yokozuna. "I didn't have the concentration to get higher," he says. "The guys who make yokozuna are special people. They're really different."

Konishiki entered the Takasago stable in Tokyo in 1982. He had shaved his head just before his graduation from high school. It was his last defiant act for a long time.

Konishiki heaves his monumental body through his training stable with the swagger of a young chieftain among his tribesmen. And if a sumo stable is not a tribe, it certainly has enough totems and taboos to provide anthropologists with doctoral theses for generations. "I'm back in the Stone Age, man," Konishiki says.

Tradition permeates the very clay that the wrestlers, called sumotori, stomp on. "You've got to look at sumo with a sense of humor," Konishiki says. His laugh sounds like the sputtering cough of a small motor. "The foreigners who have a hard time over here can't laugh about it. "But," he reflects, "there's a time to take things seriously."

When he first got to Tokyo, his stable boss named him Konishiki, after a yokozuna who fought in the late 19th century. "All I know is that he was small and had five wives," says Konishiki II, sighing. "We live in a different world, man. That was back when you could have 20 wives, and they wouldn't sue you for anything."

The life of a young sumotori borders on indentured servitude. Most aspiring wrestlers join up around 15; they add bulk by basically force-feeding themselves. Konishiki had no problem with that, but the required uniform -- the briefest of briefs -- put him off. "I didn't want to walk around in diapers," he says. "But I'm here, and I'm wearing them."

His initiation was brutal. Stablemasters spat at him, threw salt into his mouth and whacked him with bamboo canes. One night an older wrestler stumbled in drunk and knee-dropped the sleeping Konishiki on the head. "No reason," Konishiki says with equanimity. "He just had an urge to knee-drop somebody, and I was there. It was strictly first come, first served."

Another boozy veteran bashed Konishiki in the face with a beer bottle. "I wanted to get back at the guy, but I couldn't," Konishiki says. "When you're a rookie, you're a dirtbag. You can only take hits, you can't give them. It ain't like America."

But Konishiki could take some solace. "They only abuse the most promising guys," he says. "And they abused me every day. I got so used to pain that I forgot what pain was." He dutifully performed apprentice chores: bathing and feeding his tormentors, sponging the sweat off them, running errands for them and even wiping where 350-pound sumotori can't wipe. The only way to freedom from these indignities was to fight up the rankings until he was privileged to use beginners as his own servants.

As he relates his story, Konishiki is straddling two plastic beer crates in the dim, drafty basement of the Shinto shrine where he trains. A dozen blotchy-faced stableboys stand around a clay ring, slapping their thighs and swaying from side to side. Some pound their palms against round wooden pillars sunk into the ground; others splat together like mating water beds. Konishiki is wearing a voluminous blue and white kimono imprinted with palm trees. Two minions work on repairing and reoiling his topknot of hair. "I'm his slave," says Cosier (Fats) Gaspar, one of the six junior wrestlers in Konishiki's retinue. "But that's O.K., because he's a great master."

Gaspar, a 295-pound minnow from Oahu, came over last year. He played -- what else? -- noseguard at Arizona Western College until he blew out his knee. He had to sear several tattoos off his shoulders, leaving hideous scars, because sumo's strict rules forbid any "impure" body markings.

Gaspar's toughest task may be waking up Konishiki every morning. "I've got to jump on his back," Gaspar says, "then punch him in the head and yell, 'Get up! Get up!' "

Konishiki usually lifts weights, shoves and splats until lunch, then eats. And eats. He eats enormous bowls of rice and huge quantities of beef, pork, chicken, fish, tofu and vegetables boiled together in a high-calorie stew called chanko-nabe. The stew will do, he says, but what he craves most is American mayonnaise -- he keeps a private stash of Hellmann's. "Every once in a while I have to get away and find a place that sells hot dogs," he says, "or something American."

All work and no poi did not make Konishiki a dull boy. With quick, jarring rushes and epic shoves, he became the fastest-rising sumotori in the Land of the Rising Sun. He made it into the highest of the sport's six divisions after only eight tournaments, a modern record. Along the way he beat some of sumo's greatest stars. But he apparently got too good too quickly for his hosts.

A strong xenophobic tide swept over Konishiki in September 1984 when he finished second in the Emperor's Cup tournament. "The Japanese never really care what color or nationality you are," he says. "That is, until you near the top of the rankings." A stop-Konishiki movement was formed. The 20-year- old was assailed because his flesh was not molded and muscled like that of a classic sumotori. He was disparaged with names like Dump Truck, the Hawaiian Monster, Meat Bomb. "Actually, I always liked Meat Bomb," he says. "I'd imagine my face on the cover of SI under the words, MEAT BOMB EXPLODES IN JAPAN."

Irate fans tried to ban the Bomb. They nailed a Konishiki doll to a tree outside a temple, sent him hate mail and death threats. There were rumors of & sinister plots to injure him in practice, tempt him with bribes, spike his food with sugar to induce diabetes. "I was sure somebody was going to walk up to me in the street and stab me in the back," says Konishiki. "It scared the hell out of me." One newspaper stole his diary and ran excerpts. Another paper demanded that tournaments be canceled if Meat Bomb became a yokozuna. A third branded Konishiki "the worst shock ever to befall Japanese society since the arrival of the Black Ships," referring to Commodore Perry's fleet, which forcibly opened Japan to Western trade in the 19th century.

There were calls to start teaching sumo in grade school so that Japan might produce wrestlers who could beat Konishiki. There was even an anti-Konishiki chant that translated loosely as: "Fool, hippo, street musician. Your mother's belly button sticks out. Your father's belly button has seven colors! I'll stick a hand in your ear and rattle around in your molars."

Gradually the vibes got to Konishiki. He was like a rookie pitcher who gets shelled his second time around the league. He slumped badly and then injured his left knee. He even lost his celebrated calm. After one loss he chucked a TV out of a second-story window. "You can't tell me Michael Jordan scores 45 points every game," Konishiki says. "He has his down days, too."

The bottom came when a stablemate threw out all of Konishiki's letters from home. "I'd read those letters every night, over and over," Konishiki says. "They were what kept me going. When they got thrown out, I cried. I asked myself, Why the hell am I here?" Pride kept him put. "I couldn't go until I made something out of myself," he says. "That's what sumo taught me, man -- how to live alone. I'm in this for myself." He persisted with courage and a Zen-like single-mindedness. In 1987 he made ozeki. Of course, it took him five runner-up finishes in tournaments instead of the usual three. He declared his independence before matches by parading around the ring in an apron embroidered with the Statue of Liberty.

He won his first tournament, the Kyushu basho, in November 1989 with a 14-1 record. Pushing tears away from his eyes, he said, "My dream has come true. " It was a very un-Japanese display of emotion, and it moved one editorialist to write, "I wonder what thoughts were contained in those teardrops. . . . We would only like to ask Konishiki to understand the spirit underlying sumo and to continue his career."

As Japan warmed to Konishiki, his confidence rose. Last November he showed up at the Kyushu basho without a bandage around his bum knee. He had worn one for six years. He won with a 13-2 record and credited his victory, in part, to a new diet: high-protein, low-fat crocodile meat. In no time he had dropped his weight to a more manageable 504 pounds.

When tush comes to shove, Konishiki is as unstoppable as a bullet train. And it's a fairly fearsome sight to behold the quivering blubber of the heftiest wrestler in sumo history attempting to squash you. "It's like he's Amtrak, and you're sitting in a Volkswagen bug," says Gaspar. "If you value your life, you've got to bail out." For a locomotive, Konishiki is capable of astonishing feats of balance, agility and brute strength.

To avoid getting blubbered flat, Konishiki's opponents try to outmaneuver him with speed and guile. His greatest weakness used to be an inability to get out of his own way. He would blow off the mark, start slapping and pushing, and just when he thought his opponent was positioned for the Big Heave, the other guy would duck low, hook Konishiki's leg and send him crashing to the clay. "Nobody can beat Konishiki one-on-one," Gaspar says. "You have to halve him and control the half you've got."

There are 74 carefully recorded tricks and dodges used to fling opponents out of the dohyo, the small clay ring. Early on, Konishiki relied on the oshidashi and the tsukioshi, a couple of open-palmed slapping moves. But when he started struggling in the mid-'80s, he perfected the yorikiri (force out), in which Konishiki grabs his opponent's belt with two hands and hoists him over the edge of the ring. The Joy of Sumo, by David Benjamin, calls this the missionary position. "The best thing about Konishiki is that he can keep cool," says Kuhaulua. "Now he can read his opponent left or right. In the past, he was all offensive."

At the March basho in Osaka, the championship came down to a contest between Konishiki and fellow ozeki Kirishima, a compact 280-pounder with movie-star good looks (he was introduced at a Paris exhibition as the "Alain Delon of sumo"). Despite -- or maybe because of -- his size, Kirishima is one of Konishiki's nemeses.

Konishiki cantilevered up to the dohyo wearing a skimpy twist of dark- colored silk with stiff tassels. His oiled black hair was tied back and sculpted into an elaborate topknot in the shape of a gingko leaf. Konishiki had the look of a man composed within himself. His mien was benign and patient, his face smiling and polished. His eyes gave away nothing.

The bout began with a lengthy war of nerves known as niramiai, in which the opponents glower at each other. "That's where you can win or lose," says Konishiki. "If you can stare down your opponent, you can feel him break." Sometimes Konishiki is the one who gets stared down. "Little boogers get in your brain," he says. "Your mind goes all kamikaze, and, man, you can't even spell your own name."

Konishiki and Kirishima faced each other in a crouch, balancing balletically on their toes. They straightened, clapped their hands, slapped their chests and lifted their legs to the side as high as their bulk permitted. After much foot-stamping, they swiped at a mound of purifying salt. Great fistfuls of it flew across the ring in shimmering parabolas. The spray showered the kimono- clad referee, who sported a dagger that he was too decorous to use in retaliation.

Konishiki has become the undisputed master of niramiai. According to The Joy of Sumo, he "wins a lot of his matches by just sitting there. His pose is a bludgeon. He seems to grow before your eyes." The combatants returned to squatting and eyeing each other grimly. Then they rose again and dug out more handfuls of salt. K & K repeated the cycle several times, like anxious hockey players circling before a face-off. The spectators -- many waving fans who bore Konishiki's image -- squealed their approval. Suddenly, a charge. Kirishima smashed belly-first into the gelatinous pile of Konishiki. Almost half a ton of muscle, gristle and chanko-nabe collided with a curious spattering sound, as if butter were being flung against concrete. The two banged bellies like rutting male moose vying for supremacy.

It was all over in 10 seconds. Kirishima tried to pull Konishiki off balance. Unpulled, Konishiki slapped him to the edge of the dohyo with a kind of heavy-footed grace. Kirishima got a hand on Konishiki's belt and tried to flip him. Unflipped, Konishiki casually snatched Kirishima's belt and bundled him out by yorikiri.

The victory provoked cries of "Banzai! Banzai!" throughout the indoor stadium, although there was a smattering of boos. Cushions rained down on the dohyo, and fans leaped up from their tatami mats to cheer. They screamed and clapped: Many were visibly drained. Konishiki gazed down at the spectators. Sweat gushed down his chest like rain in a storm gutter. At the awards ceremony he was given a huge assortment of prizes, including a ton of beef, a year's supply of gasoline, Coke, mushrooms and chestnuts, and 5,000 eels. He spouted like a happy whale, leaving the ring announcer moist with spray. Later he said, "Damn! Why didn't they give me something I could work with, like a million dollars?"

The next day he flew from Osaka to Honolulu. Since their wedding, Konishiki and Sumika have had four receptions in various corners of Japan. In Hawaii they planned two more -- one a Samoan feast. Konishiki straddled two first-class seats, and though the divider had been removed, he looked as if he had the worst seat in coach. He spent much of the flight plopped on the floor. "I'd like to be a sumo as long as I can," he said. "If I last another five, six, seven years, I'll be happy. But I'm not really into what's after sumo yet. I don't even think about tomorrow. That just slows me down. I never take two days at a time. Just one day. My way."

At dinner the flight attendant asked Konishiki to choose between pecan, apple and strawberry cream pie. "Just dump them all on my plate and mix them up," he deadpanned. "Don't even bother to slice: I'll eat the whole pies. What's the difference? It all goes to the same place anyway." When he got up to stretch, the plane seemed to list.

When the plane landed in Honolulu, Konishiki waddled out and headed for customs. One line was for U.S. citizens, the other for foreigners.

Meat Bomb laughed, a self-deprecating laugh from deep in his throat.

"Hey," he shouted to no one in particular. "Where's the line for walking gods?"

�@

Issue date: May 18, 1992

Konishiki Loves Sumo, Deplores Xenophobia

Sumo giant Konishiki will appear at the 25th anniversary of the Pan-Pacific Festival Matsuri in Hawaii this June, organizers said Tuesday.

Konishiki will perform at the June 11 block party and ride a parade float with the Konishiki Kids Club during the Matsuri Parade June 13.

Each year, thousands of musicians, artists and dancers from Japan come to Oahu to present a weekend showcase of Pan-Pacific entertainment, music, traditions and food. Most events are free.

The festival opens Friday, June 11, with a hoolaulea (block party) that closes Kalakaua Ave., the main street of Waikiki, with ethnic food stalls, craft and activity boothes, and live music and hula.

The Pan-Pacific Matsuri Parade the following Sunday will also happen on Kalakaua Ave., with an eclectic mix of performers, taiko drummers, modern and traditional dancers and intricate floats at sunset.

Weekend events will also include cultural performances and demonstrations from the Pan-Pacific region, including artists, dancers and taiko drummers. The showcase happens at the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center's Fountain Courtyard and Ala Moana Shopping Center's Center Stage throughout the weekend.

This year's festivities also focus around the 150th anniversary of U.S.-Japan relations. Other activities include a hula festival, a ground golf exhibition and the 4th Annual Hawaiian Half Marathon & 5-Mile Fun Run/Walk.

For more information and an updated schedule: www.pan-pacific-festival.com . The event is sponsored in part by the Matsuri in Hawaii Advisory Committee and the Hawaii Tourism Authority, and is held each year in conjunction with the King Kamehameha Day celebration. Since its 1980 inception, the mission of the Pan-Pacific Festival--Matsuri in Hawaii has been to promote intercultural friendship and overcome language and geographic barriers through shared interests. Today the festival is one of Hawaii's largest multi-cultural events.

2004 American City Business Journals Inc.
Posted on Wed, May 5, 2004

Yamato�fs Outstanding Career Comes to a Close

By Mark Panek ©

Yamato (George Kalima) announced he will retire immediately following sumo�fs Aki Basho, which began yesterday in Tokyo. His retirement marks the end of a remarkably successful career in which the Waimanalo native became the first member of the Magaki stable to reach sumo�fs top division, rising as high as Maegashira-12 in 1997 and remaining there through this past January�fs Hatsu Basho.

Though frequently overshadowed by the accomplishments of Akebono and Musahimaru, Kalima withstood one injury after the next throughout his career and watched seven of his fellow locals return to Hawaii as he made his way up the ranks to become only the sixth foreigner in the long history of sumo to compete in the makunouchi division, a heroic feat for anyone attempting to succeed in the National Sport of Japan.

Kalima entered Magaki Beya in 1990 after discussions with sumo recruiter Larry Aweau and his friend Chad Rowan, who competes in Jesse Kuhaulua�fs Azumazeki Beya. Unlike Rowan, who had the company of four other foreigners at the time in Azumazeki Beya, Kalima was left on his own at age twenty to adjust to the harsh life of a new sumo recruit, relying initially only on the broken English of his boss�f driver to begin learning the nuances of the sport. His brother Glenn joined him a year later but was forced to retire after three years due to a knee injury. And now, after splitting the past four years between sumo�fs top two divisions, Kalima is hanging up his mawashi.

"It just so happened that all of this stuff was going down in my life that I thought, `Okay, this is it,�f and decided to leave," he says, in what turns out to be the understatement of the year.

The story of Kalima�fs career is an illustration in the hardness of the dohyo, the oft-forgotten violent nature of the sport, and an ancient, culturally-specific definition of strength and valor which leaves no room whatsoever for injury, sometimes taking the idea of "playing hurt" to ridiculous levels of physical self-destruction. His troubles began, it seems, from the very beginning, when he hyper-extended his knee during his first week of practice. From there, he has battled through two shoulder injuries, a back injury, a broken his left wrist, and the list goes on, right down to fingernails, painfully blackened from grabbing opponents�f mawashi.

"I broke my left wrist twice, from pushing all the time," Kalima says, as a matter of course. "The other guy weighs 300, 400 pounds and he�fs coming at you, and you�fre banging him in the chest and in the face, something�fs gotta break."

In the entire eight years of his career he has never been 100% healthy, a common condition among sumotori, whose existence depends so much on their rank that they are often unwilling to take even a few days off from training to rest minor injuries which, given time, can turn into major ones.

"Everybody�fs competing for the same spot.," Kalima says. "Everybody will not really ignore their injuries, but, you know, tape it up, suck it up, and go," illustrating a particularly Japanese drive he defines as "gamman." Gamman extends all the way to the rules of sumo, which ignore any injuries that do not occur during competition in a major basho and treat absences as losses without ever bothering to ask why. In this regard, sumo is perhaps the most martial of the martial arts, more like war than sport, in that it just goes on and leaves the bodies behind. Jerry Rice can miss an entire season and come back to a fat contract; Yamato catches a cold which develops into life-threatening pneumonia, as he did on the first day of the Hatsu Basho this past January, and he must battle his way back from however far he was demoted after missing however many matches.

"On the first day [of the basho] I started feeling funny, like my head was spinning," Kalima explains. "I guess I caught a cold, and I had a high fever. But like I said, you gamman, you go out there and you do it, cause if I don�ft go out there and wrestle, then I drop down." The cold persisted, accompanied by a fever, and the weakened Yamato finished with a record of 7-8--amazing under the circumstances, but not enough to maintain his rank. He was demoted down to Maegashira-16--the last position in makunouchi--for the Haru Basho in Osaka in March.

More important than the demotion in rank was the demotion in health caused by Yamato�fs failure to get sufficient rest. His cold developed into full-blow pneumonia, which had him on his back for a month with a tube sticking out of his side to drain the water from his right lung. "It felt like a sword being driven into my side." Needless to say, he did not compete in Osaka, and was dropped again, to Juryo-12 , sumo�fs only other salaried division. For eight weeks he could not train, and he lost more than fifty pounds.

Yamato came back to practice with nothing, but was able to get himself back to about 60% in time for the Natsu Basho in May. While athletes in other sports would have taken more time to get back into top shape, another absence was a luxury Yamato could not afford. "I wasn�ft ready," Kalima admits. "But if I never went out there I would drop anyway." He finished with disastrous results: only one win and fourteen losses, and a demotion out of sumo�fs paid ranks to Makushita-9. But at least he didn�ft get hurt, and he could shift his focus to July�fs Nagoya Basho, where a healthy Yamato could easily pile up enough wins at that level to make it back to juryo for the September basho.

But when he had finally worked himself back into peak condition, fate interrupted the comeback. Shortly after arriving in Nagoya, Yamato was a passenger in a car which spun out on a rainy night and crashed into a guardrail, sending him right back into the hospital.

He watched the tournament from his hospital bed, again, as someone else won the spot in juryo he had been ready to claim, and someone else took his Makushita-9 spot. Another five weeks passed with no training as the war went on without him, and he was dropped further, down to Makushita-49 for the September tournament, a rank he hadn�ft seen in six years and a demotion completely unrelated to his skill and determination.

"I mean, I could see if I was fighting and I lost, and I fell down," Kalima says. But his trip back down the ranks had been frustratingly beyond the man�fs control.

Kalima�fs second prolonged stay in the hospital in the space of six months gave him ample time to ponder his future. At 28 it was getting harder to get himself back into condition after weeks without training, the freak accidents notwithstanding. He was no longer on the sumo payroll after his demotion from juryo, and the reality of his present rank meant that it would take, at the very least, three tournaments to make it back to juryo, meaning that he would not be paid again until May. Further, he wished to get married but could not do so without the permission of his stablemaster, who would not give it until Yamato returned to juryo. And finally, he decided it was simply time for a change. He would compete in September and then retire on a positive note.

"I thought, `What�fs the sense in staying?�f" Kalima says, more with excitement than regret. "My dream was to make it to makunouchi, and I did that. I might as well get out and start my own business now, instead of two or three years from now. Two or three years from now my business could be booming."

Kalima plans to follow in the footsteps of the recently-retired Konishiki and remain in Japan after his retirement, where he sees a better chance for success. "Job opportunities in Hawaii are real slim right now, and I�fm not a slim guy," he laughs. He hopes to use some of his notoriety to get his new T-shirt printing business going, which he will finance with money he was able to save over the last four years of his career.

In spite of the events of the past nine months Kalima is happy with his career. He is proud to have come to Japan, learned the language and the culture, and achieved his dream. It was never an easy road, but Kalima expects to be able to draw from his experience is sumo as a source of strength in meeting the challenges that await.

"When I was in the ring, there was nobody else there to help me," he explains. "It�fs me and me alone; it�fs my fight. I did it all on my own, and now I can do something else. I have the confidence in myself that I can do it."

The war will go on without Yamato. But George Kalima is ready for real life.

After consecutive losses to pnumonia and and oncoming truck had driven him down to Makushita-49 in September of 1998, former Maegashira-12 Yamato was faced with a decision. He could sweat and pound his way back up to sumo's paid ranks, or he could call it a career and shift his attention to other dreams. At the age of 28 with plans to marry and hopes of going into business for himself, he opted over the objections of his oyakata to hang up his mawashi. "They wanted me to wait until I made it back to juryo to have the wedding," he said at the time, "and they said if I waited two more years to retire they could cut my hair in the Kokugikan. I was thinking, 'Two more years? In two years my busniess could be booming.'"

The sound of the packed house on a recent Saturday night at Kama'aina's, the restaurant Yamato opened this past November with his new wife Naoko, proved the former Hawaiian sekitori wrong. His business is already booming, just over a year after he stepped off the dohyo for good. Blenders hum to the sweet sound of tropical music, bringing forth frosty pina coladas to take happy guests away from Roppongi to an imaginary stretch of sand under swaying palms. Searing tuna sizzles in the open kitchen on its way to becoming poke (po-kee), a traditional Hawaiian seafood salad. And the best hamburer in town drips its juices into the open grill, brighenting the room with a flash of fire.

"Order!" A waitress yells into the kitchen, "Two Seafood Lau Lau, One Loco Moco, One Island Fish, One Kama'aina's Chicken." And Yamato moves into action, setting food on the burners before him the way he once wrapped up weaker opponents and marched them out of the ring.

But Yamato was not born a chef any more than he was born a sekitori. George Kalima came to Japan from the island of Oahu two years after his classmate Akebono, only after he had some idea about what he was getting into. He and his wife went about opening their business with similar deliberation, taking months to choose the perfect location, and arranging the opening around the schedule of Maui's Dutch O'Neal, the chef/consultant responsible for the highly regarded Sam Choy's in Odaiba, among several other establishments. O'Neal, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, trained Kalima during his first two months of operation in everything from creating the menu, to ordering produce, to handling a busy kitchen and cooking to perfection.

"It's a tough business," O'Neal said. "He has a good location. But the most important thing is the food. If you have good food, it doesn't matter where you are. People are going to find you. And they're going to come back."

Once he and O'Neal perfected the food, however, Kalima took his restaurant to another level. In addition to gravy and mashed potatoes that make guests wonder whether gramma is in the kitchen, Kama'aina's boasts an atmosphere unmatched in the lights of Roppongi. In true local Hawaiian style, Kalima family members don aprons and help out in the kitchen whenever they're in town. George's sister Ipo mixes drinks, sings Hawaiian songs, and has been known to pull up a chair and talk story, making guests feel right at home. And when all the food is out, Chef Yamato puts down the pans and walks the room just to make sure his guests are all enjoying themselves in his house .

He'll also pull up a chair, particularly if either of two subjects come up: sumo, or his new son Kali'iokalani. As for the common question regarding a possible future in sumo for the boy, Kalima simply says, "I'm going to let him decide himself." If the kid is anything like his father, the decision will be well thought out. And the result will be a complete success.

Mark Panek ©

But not all retired sumo wrestlers take that step. One ex-maegashira in particular did mooe into the restaurant business, but he took adoantage of his unique background and opened up a Hawaiian restaurant, right in the heart of Tokyo's Roppongi entertainment district. George Kalima, ex-sekitori Yamato, is the proud owner and operator of Kama`aina's. Yamato, who used to make a lioing out of whipping his fellow makuuchi wrestlers, is now whipping up delicious poke and loco moco for his customers.

The restaurant's motto is Hawaiian Style Restaurant Chef, Former Makuuchi Sumo Wrestler Yamato brings you a taste of Hawaii. The motto sums it up. If you are looking to enjoy Hawaii Island faoorites like kalua pork·and seafood laulau, then Kama`aina's is the place.

How is the food at Kama`aina's? Haoing grown up in Hawaii and eating at Kama`aina's seoeral times, only one word can describe the cuisine, ono! For those non-Hawaiian speakers, ono means delicious in Hawaiian.

To get the restaurant going, Yamato got help from his good friend Dutch O'eil, who had opened another Hawaiian restaurant in Tokyo, Sam Choy's. Dutch is a professional chef residing on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. When Yamato told him he wanted to go into the restaurant business, Dutch came ooer to Japan to help open the restaurant, and more importantly, train Yamato as a chef. Halooe to cook, so I really enjoy being the chef, explains Yamato.

The first three months of being in business, the restaurant was a real family affair. Yamato's sister and mother had flown ooer from Waimanalo, Oahu to help out in the restaurant, with mom working the bar and sister Ku`uipo waiting tables. Plus wife Naoko was greeting the customers at the door and seroing as cashier. Yamato's family has all gone back to Hawaii now, though they haoe been replaced with local hires.

Although it is sad to see his family return, Naoko is no longer seating customers because she recently gaoe birth to a new member of the family, he is their first son, Keali`iokalani. Congratulations to the Kalima family! When asked if he would encourage his son to enter sumo in 14 years, Yamato answered, he's going to let him decide himself.

Kama`aina's - Business Hours - 5pm - 11pm; Location - 3-15-24 Morikawa
Building B1, Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo; Telephone - 03-5772-6855;

Mark Panek ©

Date: 1998/09/26

It has to happen sooner or later. Yamato at Makushita East 49 had decided to retire from sumo. He wrestled as high as Makuuchi 12 one time but now he has wisely decided to hang up his mawashi for good. Yamato was a childhood buddy of Akebono and has been his classmate ever since both attended the same kindergarten in Hawaii.

Sanoyama oyakata aka Konishiki has announced that he has handed in his retirement paper to the Nihon Sumo Kyokai on September 25. He would give up his oyakatahood to devote more time to show business and lecture circuits. He has a production company called KP ("Konishiki Power") in Japan and is now appearing in Suntory and Uniden TV commercials there.

There is a talk that Yamato and Konishiki are now planning together to set up a company in Hawaii to sell surfing goods sometime next year..

Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1998 06:16:54 +0100

A Hawaiian rikishi and former East Maegashira 12 Yamato who just completed Aki-basho with respectable 5-2 record at East Makushita 49 announced his intention of retirement after Aki-basho for his kidney problem.

�@

Date: 1996/11/08

** Kalima on Doorstep **

Waimanalo native George Kalima, 26, known in Japan's sumo circles as Yamato, can earn a spot in the sport's top division by winning the majority of his 15 matches in the Kyushu Basho that begins this weekend in Fukuoka, Japan. Kalima, a 6-2, 415-pounder, is currently ranked as juryo 1, the top position in sumo's second highest division. If he wins eight or more matches in the coming tournament, Kalima will likely be promoted to the makuuchi division, the home of sumo's top 40 performers, including grand champion Akebono (Waimanalo's Chad Rowan), champion Musashimaru (Waianae's Fiamalu Penitani), and senior wrestler Konishiki (Nanakuli's Salevaa Atisanoe).

By MARTY KUEHNERT

For most of his sumo career, Henry Armstrong Miller competed in the middle of the pack of about 700 rikishi. If you arrived at the arena or turned on your TV just to watch the upper two divisions "sekitori" from about 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., you usually missed Henry, and you missed a treat.

Miller, known by the ring name of "Sentoryu" (Fighting Dragon) was impossible to miss, if you started watching from about 3 p.m.

Three things set Sentoryu apart from the normal mounds of lard -- he was black, he had a rock-hard physique right out of Muscle Magazine, and he frequently had all four limbs heavily taped to allow his battered body a chance to compete.

If you didn't watch many or any of his 705 bouts, however, you've now blown your chance, because there will be no more.

The last American, and the only one from the mainland ever to reach the lofty sekitori status, has retired. He had his last match on Nov. 23 in Fukuoka, a losing makushita bout against Asaofuji.

"He ended the same way he lost a lot of his bouts," said personal trainer and fitness guru Jeff Libengood, "by charging hard, so hard that the other guy flew back, but then with a little side step, his opponent stayed on the dohyo while Henry went flying off."

Indeed many rikishi said they didn't relish competing against the 175-cm, 136-kg strongman with 53-cm biceps, who only knew one speed, full throttle.

Kyokushusan, one of the Mongolian technicians, confessed, "I hate competing against Sentoryu. It feels like you're hitting a dump truck, and my whole body aches for days afterwards."

The kid from St. Louis didn't always pack that much meat and wallop, though. When Miller arrived in Japan as a 19-year old in May 1988 he weighed 90 kg., but he looked downright anorexic compared with the other behemoths with whom he had to clash.

Just two years earlier Miller had been the 167-pound (76 kg) district wrestling champ representing McCluer High School, and he had also been an outstanding football player who ran the 100 meters in 12 seconds.

Football seemed as if it would provide a free ride to Iowa State or the University of Missouri, but then a left knee injury put Miller in the hospital and under the knife, and all the scholarship offers disappeared.

Out of high school, Miller had nothing better to do than bag groceries, deliver pizzas and work out at the gym. The gym had the greatest appeal, and Miller quickly put on 14 kg of muscle.

In 1988, Seiichi Mitake visited St. Louis to say hello to his old friends James and Toshiko Miller, whom he had met 12 years earlier when James was working as a Master Sergeant on Yokota Air Force Base. He knew the Millers had two children; Henry, with a middle name chosen in honor of the first man to walk on the moon, and a younger sister named Jun.

Mitake was startled to see how little Henry had grown and was so muscular. He explained to the Millers that he was a member of the Tomozuna Stable Supporters Group and he would make the introduction if Henry wanted to try his hand at sumo.

"Mr. Mitake told me I could become famous someday, earn lots of money, get free room and board, and so on," recalls Miller, "so I thought 'What the heck, I haven't got anything better to do.' "

Miller arrived in Japan in May of 1988 and debuted on the dohyo two months later. Language and food were not easy barriers to overcome in the beginning.

"I didn't like chanko and all those vegetables in the beginning, and I didn't speak a word of Japanese. But since my mom was Japanese, people acted like I should speak it and that I should know local customs. It was embarrassing when I made mistakes."

Over the years Sentoryu mastered the language and learned to tolerate, if not like, the food. But the nemesis which dogged him for 15 years was injury.

His first hospitalization came in his third tourney when he dislocated his right shoulder. At least 12 or 13 more hospitalizations followed, although Sentoryu laughs, "There were so many, it's hard to remember them all."

The first surgery was one on his right knee in 1992, and six more followed.

"On the surgeries, it's easier to remember, though, because all I have to do is count the scars."

In spite of all the hard luck with injuries, Sentoryu climbed the ladder and made his sekitori "juryo" debut in the Kyushu Basho in November 1994. And he finally made it into the top "makuuchi" division in July 2000.

Overall, the bulldog from St. Louis had a commendable record of 402 wins, 303 losses, and 99 absences due to injury. At the makuuchi level his record was 19 wins and 26 losses.

Asked whether he has any regrets about choosing to go into this type of dangerous occupation, Miller emphatically said, "No. I'm proud that I made it up to the highest makuuchi division. Not five in a hundred guys who start in sumo make it that far.

"And I know it made my parents proud.

"When my parents left Japan in 1975, my mom's family was not very happy because my dad was black and he was in the military. But now the whole family has gotten together because of what I did in sumo. They are all proud of me. And I found a great wife here, too. Maki. So all in all, I'm really glad I decided to come over here 15 years ago."

Reminded that the Aug. 28, 1989, Sports Illustrated article written about him by Shelley Smith, quoted him as saying he was here with the hope of turning a sumo career into financial security for himself and his family ("I want to be a star in this business. The money can be great, and I want to be great."), Miller's face became suddenly more somber.

"The money part didn't work out," he says flatly. "Sumo pays based on rank, and while the very top guys get pretty good pay, the rank-and-file get next to nothing.

"I had 17 tournaments or months at juryo where I got paid 650,000 yen (recently it went up to 850,000 yen) and three tournaments at makuuchi where I got about 1,000,000 yen per month.

"All the rest of my years in sumo I got paid between 40,000 yen and 75,000 yen a month. And since I had to pay a lot of my own medical bills -- and even for my own tape that I needed to compete -- I wound up with a minus bank account when I finally quit."

When asked whether a large retirement bonus and other benefits will help ease the pain of all those years of slave wages, Miller reports another sad story.

"I got my retirement money last week and it was 6,340,000 yen. And that's it. There is no pension, no insurance help, no educational opportunities. Nothing else. Just the one-time payment and goodbye.

"I don't even have the right to become an oyakata (elder), because I only competed at the sekitori level for 20 tournaments, and their requirement to become an oyakata is a minimum of 30."

Yet Miller says he's not bitter at the way he's been treated. "It's their system, and although it's not perfect, it taught me a lot. About respect, about hard work. I think it made me a better man . . . It just didn't make me rich."

Sentoryu is tentatively planning his top-knot cutting ceremony and retirement party for Feb. 11. Stay tuned for further details.

The Japan Times: Dec. 3, 2003

Posted on Wed, Feb. 11, 2004

American sumo wrestler Sentoryu retires

Associated Press

TOKYO - American wrestler Sentoryu formally stepped down from sumo's raised ring Wednesday in a retirement ceremony at Tokyo's Ryogoku Kokugikan.

Sentoryu, a native Missourian whose real name is Henry Armstrong Miller, had his top knot cut off in a traditional ceremony that was attended by family and friends, including former sumo wrestlers Akebono and Konishiki of Hawaii.

The 34-year-old Sentoryu, a native of St. Louis, plans to follow in the footsteps of Akebono and take up a career in K-1, a sport combining elements of kickboxing and karate.

Sentoryu, who made his sumo debut at the Nagoya Grand Sumo Tournament in 1988, spent most of his career in the sport's lower ranks, but was elevated to the elite makuuchi division near the end of his career. He was the only black American to take part in Japan's ancient sport.

Posted on Wed, Feb. 12, 2004

Sentoryu has announced he will be joining PRIDE in the heavyweight class, at a press conference held today, at the offices of Dream Stage Entertainment, his new bosses. His new boss said he will be participating in an event scheduled for April. He will take on ex-Judoka Yoshida Hidehiko. "My biggest plan in the future is to arrange a match between him and Akebono", said the promoter. PRIDE Superstar Nobuhiko Takada(who is an ex-Makushita rikishi, if I'm not mistaken) has agreed to help him get ready for the match, and lent him his "dojo" for this purpose. "Not much time left, but I'd like to see him defeat the big names!!", he said. Sentoryuu has wrestling and American football experience in his past. "Striking the face is illegal in PRIDE, but as soon as you put on gloves, you somehow become stronger", said Sentoryuu. When he went to audition for Takada at his dojo, he used "open-fingered" gloves. He was hitting the punching bag so hard, the impressed Takada said " I was afraid he was going to bring down the dojo..". His ring name for the moment will be Sentoryuu. He is slated to start full training with Takada the week after next.

Moti ©

(As a Makushita West 5 with 2 wins and 5 losses and no chance at all of getting back to Juryo) "I felt I simply reached the physical limit. Prior to the basho, I talked to my wife about retiring if I get the makekoshi." (Sentoryu will be leaving the Kyokai and will be working for a company headed by his wife's father.)

US Hopeful Joins Tomozuna Stable

Dakine Sumo

Someone recently asked me about how I ended up in Japan and when I told him, he said something to the effect of �gwow, it sounds like fate has just swept you up and hasn*t put you down yet�h. I decided that that was a pretty good way to describe my life over the past few years. The below mentioned account of my first Sumo experience is a typical luck filled event which supports this.

We couldn*t have picked a better day in early May to witness the Nihon version of �hClash of the Titans�h. I stepped off the JR at Ryogoku station and tried to find my way to the street to look for the unmistakable, green roofed Sumo arena. Arriving early, I decided to stop at the quicky-mart to get myself a slightly off-kilter bottled water (Dakara, Lemon water, etc.) and who do you think were there also? No not Brittany Spears and Justin Timberlake. Three giants with funny hair-dos and what look to me like oversized kimonos, buying their share of strawberry-crunchies, nilla yum-yums and snacky-cakes. Who knew that Sumo wrestlers shop for their daily staple at the same super-convenient stores as most Americans? I guess they to need several easy ways to keep those precious (in this case nearly sacred) pounds on.

Having my fill of grapefruit water and enough sugar to induce a buzz, off I went in search of the arena. You don*t have to go far from the Ryogoku station (Iwas there before my buzz kicked in) to find the SumoDome. Having been 20 minutes early for my rendezvous, I decided to take a stroll around the place. It*s a good thing I had my shades on because right around the corner I encountered a full frontal assault on the old senses. The Tokyo Edo Museum, a heli-cool piece of architecture which floats in the air like a magic carpet on steroids. I decided I would have to visit the museum on a whole separate occasion since this behemoth would not fit a fram of my wide angle lens from most points of veiw.

2:00 rolls around and the group assembles in front of the vibrantly colored flags near the entrance which id crowded with people lined up to see wrestlers like a bunch of teeny-boppers at an �gIn Sync�h concert. We are 8 across including; 3 Americans, 1 Indian, 2 Chinese and a couple of Nihonjin including one very cute baby whose picture was later taken (many times by local reporters) with a Sumo Champion. We make our way to our seats and to my feet shegrin (but not mine) we got to sit in the good seats. They*re not seats at all really, more like pillows. Not realizing the nose-bleed section, a whole other section above us containing real seats, was above us, I thought the whole place was like this. I was quickly reminded that most Japanese people have never been to a Sumo tournament, never mind having sat in the pillow section with cute (or undersized if you*re American) little tea cups and such.

One of the reasons why the seats were easy to get is that Sumo spectatorship is at an all time low. That being said, it*s a good time for people like you and me to go because better seats and tickets are more readily available. However, one of the reasons why Sumo has a low turn out is because the champ is Hawaiian (rumor has it he*s actually Samoan). Learning this, I tried to draw a parallel with the Americas and decided that if this premise held true for the U.S., we would have a few less beer, guzzling couch potato sports fans also. When*s the last time you saw a Native American basketball star, boxing champ or 95mph fast ball pitcher? Me neither!

The money bouts are in the final round, which are without a doubt the most popular but, we happened to arrive before the second last round (they start at about 9a.m. and go to around 6p.m.). This allowed us plenty of time to scam a couple of ringside (5 rows back) seats to get up close and personal with the great warriors. In the section I now refer to as the �ginsurance section�h (you have to sign a waiver to sit in the first few rows to eliminate any liabilities if you get squashed by a fly-wrestler), I became intrigued by the sport which I had previously only seen on T.V. every few years.

Following a quick photo shoot we headed to the canteen for some beers and then back to our nest (literally) for some prime time enjoyment. �gEat this, it*s good with beer�h Dave says as he passes me some dried squid. Dave is a recent aquaintence of mine who happened to be the best person to sit next to in the whole place. Dave is married to a Nihonjin, speaks both languages (all three if you count his Hawaiian �gPigeon English�h) and happens to be a Sumo expert. Apparently, he also had something to do with the development of the official Sumo web-site. Dave also has his own Sumo site (www.dakinesumo.com) which posts the latest and the greatest of the sport. The web-site address includes the phrase �gdakine�h which is typical of this Hawaiian Pigeon English that I speak of. If you are ever on the Nrth shore of Mauna Loa (Hawaiis Bonzai Pipeline) with a surfboard in your hands, don*t be surprised to hear a local say �gListen Houlie, if you can*t ride da kine (the kind) a waves we got here den go back to California�h.

Mark Panek ©

The Yukan Fuji - January 21, 2000

Former Komusubi Itai, 42, was invited by the Foreign Correspondent Association to give a speech titled "Mythology and Reality of the Sumo World".

During the talk, he admitted he was involved in "yaocho(match fixing)" with 18 rikishis including a yokozuna. He also said "yaocho" was most prevalent during his active years between 1978 to 1991. He disclosed that out of the 30 bouts then, the "non-yaocho" bouts were only five or six bouts a day and some days there were as few as only three bouts. He claimed at that time the only "clean" yokozuna was Onokuni.

Currently there is one or perhaps up to several yaocho matches a day. He says there is one yokozuna and one ozeki as well as 18 sekitoris out of the forty are still involved in "yaocho" (as for yokozunas, he was hesitant to spell out but he said, "it's obvious if you watch him"). "All oyakatas are aware of it but they just cannot tell their own rikishis."

He also reflected on his matches with a current yokozuna and said, "I fought him 'clean' the first time but the second time I gave him 400,000 to lose (he alleges this yokozuna 'bought' two bouts this basho)".

Regarding the rumors about the mysterious death of the former Onaruto oyakata (former kotetsuyama) who disclosed yaocho stories on a weekly Shukan Post and death of his close associate at the same time, "I think the oyakata died of an illness and the deaths are coincident," doubting the consipiracy theory.

"I believe the current low popularity of sumo is directly attributed to the 'yaocho' matches in the past. They are suffering from the past sin. Now that yaocho matches have decreased, this is the time for them to initiate the reform. I hold no grudge against the Kyokai and this is not about the money (he has been disclosing the problem on a weekly magazine)".

Itai has joined Onaruto Beya in 1978 and had his dohyo debut in the Aki Basho. In the following year he has moved up quickly to Juryo and assumed "Kotetsuyama" - the Onaruto oyakata's shikona. In 1980 he has made it to Makuuchi and changed his shikona back to "Itai" - his real name. In 1988 he was promoted to Komusubi and left the ozumo in 1991. He currently owns and manages a chanko restaurant in Edogawa-Ward in Tokyo.

Comment by Chairman Tokitsukaze: "I have no direct comment on the accusation as I was not there. In the past we have investigated the alleged incidents but not even one rikishi has admitted the fact. The Kyokai can categorically state there is no truth to the matter."

A Sleeping Giant Wakes

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