Taro Akebono, a Hawaii-born sumo wrestler who turned the game’s first overseas grand champion and helped to gas a resurgence within the sport’s reputation within the Nineties, has died in Tokyo. He was 54.
He died of coronary heart failure in early April whereas receiving care at a Tokyo hospital, based on a press release from his household that was distributed by the USA army in Japan on Thursday.
When he turned Japan’s sixty fourth yokozuna, or grand champion sumo wrestler, in 1993, he was the primary foreign-born wrestler to realize the game’s highest title in its 300-year trendy historical past. He went on to win a complete of 11 grand championships, and his success set the stage for an period throughout which foreign-born wrestlers dominated the highest ranges of Japan’s nationwide sport.
Akebono, who was 6-foot-8 and 466 kilos when he was first named yokozuna at 23, towered over his Japanese opponents. Painfully shy exterior the dohyo, because the sumo ring is understood, he was identified for utilizing his peak and attain to maintain opponents at a distance.
Akebono’s rivalry with the Japanese brothers Takanohana and Wakanohana, each grand champions, was a serious driver of sumo’s renewed reputation within the Nineties. In the course of the opening ceremony for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, Akebono demonstrated the sumo ring entrance ritual for a global viewers, commanding the sector along with his hulking physique and charming stare.
Taro Akebono was born Chad George Ha’aheo Rowan in Waimanalo, Hawaii, in 1969. He performed basketball in highschool and briefly at Hawaii Pacific College earlier than shifting to Japan in 1988 on the invitation of a fellow Hawaiian wrestler who had grow to be a coach.
Realizing nothing about Japan and talking nearly no Japanese, {the teenager} started dwelling and coaching at a sumo secure ruled by strict hierarchy, cooking and cleansing for extra skilled wrestlers. Quickly he was charting a meteoric rise by means of the game’s ranks, dominating along with his measurement.
“We had been simply brute power,” he stated in a later interview, referring to himself and fellow wrestlers from Hawaii within the Nineties. “We received quick or we misplaced quick. We weren’t too technical.”
In 1992, the Yokozuna Promotion Council, which decides which wrestlers are worthy of sumo’s high honor, denied it to a different Hawaiian, saying no foreigner may possess the dignity befitting the title. The choice prompted allegations of racism and raised questions in regards to the council’s choice course of. Solely a handful of wrestlers maintain the title on the similar time, and they’re chosen by means of a vote from candidates who’ve received two consecutive tournaments.
A 12 months later, simply 5 years after arriving in Japan and becoming a member of the game, Akebono broke by means of that barrier.
He later stated in interviews that he hardly ever thought-about his nationality within the ring, considering of himself as a sumo wrestler at the beginning. He turned a naturalized Japanese citizen in 1996, and altered his identify to Taro Akebono. His chosen sumo identify, “Akebono,” means daybreak in Japanese.
“I wasn’t considering, ‘I’m an American, I’m going to go on the market, plant my flag in the course of the ring and tackle the Japanese,’” he advised The New York Instances in 2013.
He gained acceptance and recognition within the sumo world partially as a result of folks in Japan appreciated his devotion to the game, regardless that in his early competitions, cheers from the group had been far louder for his Japanese-born rivals.
“He makes me overlook he’s a foreigner due to his earnest perspective towards sumo,” Yoshihisa Shimoie, editor of Sumo journal, stated in 1993. By the early 2000s, dozens of the ranked wrestlers had been overseas, together with Mongolians, a Georgian and an Argentine.
Akebono is survived by his spouse, Christine Rowan, daughter Caitlyn, 25, and sons Cody, 23, and Connor, 20, based on the household.
In 2001, he retired from the game at 31, citing continual knee issues. He went on to coach youthful wrestlers, and likewise competed in kickboxing, skilled wrestling and blended martial arts.
“I’m retiring with a sense of nice gratitude for being given the prospect to grow to be a yokozuna and expertise one thing open to solely only a few folks,” he stated on the time of his retirement.
Motoko Wealthy contributed reporting.
