Musashimaru has found his own guardian angel in his wife

TOKYO >> As Fiamalu Penitani anxiously prepared for an April 11 kidney transplant from his wife, Masami, reflection on the date prompted a sudden double-take.

“I told her, ‘Isn’t this the (anniversary) of when we registered our marriage?’” Penitani said.

“She told me it was. It was our ninth anniversary, so right there I felt everything was going to be fine,” Penitani said of their latest partnership.

Less than two weeks after the surgery, the still imposing 6-foot, 4-inch, 353-pound figure known in sumo as Musashimaru was back overseeing the training of young sumotori at his Musashigawa stable in the Edogawa section of the capital.

“There was some concern about whether the kidney would be (compatible), but everything’s been good, real good,” Musashimaru said.

While there has been no announcement on the condition of Chad Rowan, former yokozuna Akebono, who has been hospitalized with as as yet unconfimed illness in southern Japan, Musashimaru has been back at ringside preparing his pupils for the May tournament in Tokyo.

“He looks a lot better,” said Mamo Ailua Penitani, Musashimaru’s 22-year-old nephew who competes in sumo’s third-highest division, makushita, as Musashikuni. “Everybody’s glad to have him back.”

Musashimaru rose from the football field at Waianae High to a 14-year career in Japan’s national sport, winning 12 Emperor’s Cups, symbolic of tournament championships. It was a run marked by a record 55 consecutive winning tournaments in which he avoided major health problems despite his 518 pounds. But while golfing in Nara this spring, the 45-year-old Musashimaru said he was felled by a piercing pain, after which doctors told him he would need a kidney transplant.

“Right away — without even being asked — (Masami) said she’d give me hers,” Musashimaru said. “She didn’t hesitate.”

Masami, 43, a former hula teacher, was back at the stable, where she handles much of the business side and son Joey, close to 3, in just four days, Musashimaru said. “She’s amazing.”

They were first introduced by Salevaa Atisanoe, the former Konishiki, at an outing in Yokohama and had their wedding in Hawaii.

Their stable has become a growing enterprise, taking in 16 pupils, who live in the three-story building (training room on the ground floor, wrestler’s dorm on the second and Musashimaru’s family on the third) they rent from the former Nakamura stable owner. Already, coming up on four years, they have begun looking for a bigger building and a larger training area to accommodate the growth.

Securing stock in the ruling Japan Sumo Association, a prerequisite to operating a stable, can run to $1 million — or more — when it is available. But that is only the beginning.

In Musashimaru’s case it took nearly a decade from his final 2003 ring appearance until he opened the doors on his stable, much of it spent coaching for his former mentor.

“Bringing in new wrestlers isn’t easy when you first open up a new stable from scratch,” said Maui’s Jesse Kuhaulua, who was the first foreign-born stable operator in the sport. “It is hard enough taking over an already established place, but starting your own is very difficult. You can tell Musashimaru has worked very hard to get it going.”

Between his official duties with the sumo association, he travels to recruit prospects, trains the sumotori and lines up sponsors for the stable. “People think you just coach the kids — that’s only part of it,” Kuhaulua said.

‘That’s why I couldn’t be away (from the stable) for too long,” Musashimaru said.

While the sumotori reverently refer to Masami by the time-honored title of “okami-san,” or owner, Musashimaru says she is his “angel.”

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.