Perhaps forgotten outside Japan and Hawaii, Akebono changed sumo and maybe, if just a tiny bit, Japan. He was Japan’s 64th Yokozuna in 300 years of the sport and the first to be born outside of Japan. By the time I started following sumo when I lived on Guam, Akebono had retired. Following him, the sport has been at times dominated by foreigners, especially Mongolians. Akebono was shy, sweet and funny. He was living in Tokyo when he died yesterday at 54 of heart disease. I am pretty sure he was still a big dude in his later years. But back when I was mildly following Sumo I was surprised at how svelte many of the retired rikishi were. I only mention that because it’s easy for us to imagine that dying young would hardly be surprising. They’re more athletic than they look.
(Also, America’s most famous murderer, OJ Simpson, has died.)
I did quite a bit of wrestling once upon a time. Sumo is quite a different beast. It’s a form of the sport where weight class limits are near nonexistent when compared to Western freestyle and Greco-Roman styles. It’d be like allowing the super heavyweight monster that was Alecksander Karelin up against Luis Orta, the 2020 Gold medalist in bantamweight. In Greco-Roman, that sounds like an absolutely unfair bout, but in Sumo? It’s a lot less “rigid” and allows for more tactical thought on the part of the rikishi. But, I can’t think of a more demanding form of the sport given the immense caloric intake and stress on the body.
Still, it’s quite an achievement to be declared the first foreign Yokozuna. He should be a point of pride for both Japanese and American culture.
