The great famous sumo wrestler Akebono Taro has died

At the age of 54, a man died who was known to a very large part of the world not by his name given at birth, but as Akebono Taro or simply Akebono. This huge American managed to become an icon of sumo – a form that is almost a full-fledged religion in Japan and has long looked impregnable to foreigners. Akebono not only broke into its elite, but was the first foreigner to receive the most prestigious rank in the hierarchy of the genre – the rank of yokozuna. And with it – colossal popularity, which opened tightly closed doors for foreigners.

In 1998, the city of Nagano, lost in the Japanese mountains, hosted the Olympics. The Winter Olympics, that is, the one in which the main characters are skiers, figure skaters, speed skaters, biathletes, and hockey players. But the main characters of this opening ceremony had nothing to do with winter, snow and ice. They chose the best sumo wrestlers. And if someone still did not believe that sumo for Japan is like a real religion with a four-century history, and its heroes are like gods or at least demigods, there, in Nagano, he was convinced that he was wrong. At some point, huge and, despite the February cold, almost naked, as expected during their fights, with their hair gathered in a tight bun according to the canon, the people staged a small performance, imitating, it seems, an obligatory ritual before the fight. And thousands of people synchronously sighed and groaned in frenzy, looking at how the giant with a steely gaze, belted with something white, stepped from foot to foot on the proscenium. And it seemed that from these steps and gasps of delight the earth was shaking, as if a dormant volcano had awakened somewhere nearby. Apparently, something more spectacular and more Japanese could not have been imagined for that ceremony.

Only the giant was not Japanese, even though he was entrusted with almost the most honorable mission – representing the team of the host country, whose citizenship he had received just a couple of years earlier. But it was simply impossible to find anyone cooler and more beloved than Akebono, when it was urgently necessary to replace the sick Takanohana, another sumo legend.

In fact, the Hawaii-born giant was named Chad Rowan at birth. And he had two dreams.

One is quite mundane – to work as a manager in the hotel business, the second – seemed unrealistic. The guy was attracted to sumo, despite the fact that it was considered a tightly closed territory, only for the Japanese. So far, only two wrestlers from outside have broken through to the makuuchi, the top division, both also Americans from Hawaii, who were given the pseudonyms Takamiyama and Konishiki. But Rowan chose an impossible dream. And his acquaintance with Takamiyama helped him end up in Japan, where, however, as people who understood sumo thought, nothing good awaited him. The weight – decent for 200 kg – is not bad, but the legs of a two-meter young man are too long. In sumo, the center of gravity, so as not to be pushed outside the dohyo mat or dumped on it, must be low.

Then these people were amazed at how quickly Chad Rowan, or rather now Akebono, smashed their stereotypes to pieces. He made his debut in sumo, in the “basement” divisions, in 1988. In 1990, at the age of 22, he entered the elite and showed that his long legs do not hinder him, because he can, for example, with the help of the phenomenal sharpness of the push, win in basho, “big” tournaments held once every two months, 13 victories in 15 fights – an incredible figure for a species with the highest level of competition.

And in 1993, at the age of 24, Akebono was awarded the title of yokozuna – “great champion”, a title that in Japan is almost equal to the royal one, which is so valuable that when its owner sees it on the street, he is not ashamed to fall to his knees.

Many outstanding Japanese sumo wrestlers did not reach him. Naturally, there was not a single foreign sumo wrestler among those awarded before Akebono.

And he wore it proudly until the end of his sumo career, which was followed by not very successful experiments in mixed martial arts and wrestling, cut short by heart problems that appeared in the last decade. In terms of the number of basho won – and he has accumulated 11 of them – Akebono, say, is still in the top ten strongest wrestlers of all time. And the most obvious sign of his incredible magnetism was not even his triumphant participation in the opening ceremony of the Olympics, but the fact that after his breakthrough, “legionnaires” in the Japanese genre ceased to be a rarity. About one and a half hundred of them have already performed there. Among them were Mongols, Estonians, Brazilians, and Russians. Some achieved serious success in makuuchi. And the idea that it was the mighty Hawaiian who broke this wall that protected sumo from the world, contributed to its transformation from a local phenomenon to a global phenomenon, at the same time bringing Japan and the United States a little closer together, after the news of his death was a mandatory element of any obituary. It’s all too obvious.

Alexey Dospehov