Sumo legend Akebono in the middle of his biggest battle yet

TOKYO >> Twenty five years ago, amid falling snowflakes and a crowd gathered to watch the ritual ceremonies at the Meiji Shrine, Chad Rowan strode powerfully into sumo history as the sport’s first foreign-born grand champion.

These days the immediate challenge for the 6-foot-8-inch Rowan is to rise from his wheelchair and walk, unaided, again.

Behind the doors of a rehabilitation facility in the Tokyo area, the man who competed for 13 years as Akebono works to regain mobility a year after suffering acute heart failure.

He remains proud and determined as he prepares to celebrate his 49th birthday Tuesday, family and friends say.

Few outside his immediate family (wife Christine, daughter Caitlyn, 20, and sons Cody, 17, and Connor, 14) have visited him, so private and so intent is the Kaiser High graduate from Waimanalo on not being seen in public until he regains his strength.

“He’s been an athlete all his life and still has that pride,” said Christine, the family spokeswoman. “He has come a long way.”

Not long after his 2001 retirement from sumo, a sport in which he won the Emperor’s Cup 11 times, Akebono began competing on a variety of mixed martial arts and wrestling circuits. It was while on a wrestling tour in Kitakyushu, 5-1/2 hours south of Tokyo by train, in April 2017 that he began feeling ill. One morning, after wrestling the night before, the family said he walked into a hospital seeking treatment and later collapsed.

The situation was deemed serious enough that he was placed in a medically induced coma for approximately a week, his wife said, then sedated for another week.

He improved sufficiently by October that he was able to be transferred to his current facility and begin therapy.

“Chad was able to to talk when they brought him out of the coma, but the self-feeding has come about since he transferred to his current facility,” she said.

Christine said he exulted in the Super Bowl win by the Philadelphia Eagles, his favorite team, which he watched from a laptop. “He watched it over and over,” she said.

He enjoys watching the six sumo tournaments each year and looks forward to home-cooked meals, including hot dogs, rice and ketchup his wife packs. Poke is a special treat.

His immediate goal, she said, is to improve to the point he can attend Cody’s high school graduation next month and then return to the family’s home in suburban Tokyo.

In the 1980s and ’90s Akebono and the two other most visible sumotori from Hawaii, Konishiki and Musashimaru, who took the sport by storm, were celebrated for their accomplishments in song by Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole.

All made their marks, rising to the two highest ranks in Japan’s national sport and, having retired 15 or more years ago, remain in their adopted homeland.

“I think we all knew we were going to stay in Japan after our (ring) careers were over with,” said 54-year-old Salevaa Atisanoe, who competed as Konishiki. “It is where we made names for ourselves. We’ve just all done different things.”

Waianae High graduate Fiamalu Penitani, who competed as Musashimaru, winning 12 tournaments, is the only one of the three to remain in sumo, having opened his own stable five years ago.

When Akebono was in a coma last year, Musashimaru was hospitalized in Tokyo. Musashimaru fell ill during a golf outing in Nara. He then received a kidney transplant from his wife, Masami, a former hula instructor.

“I feel good, and the doctors say I’m doing well,” said Musashimaru, who turned 47 Wednesday. “Thanks to my wife.”

When the May tournament in Tokyo concludes, he says, he will resume “house shopping for a bigger place.”

He currently has a three-story building in the Edogawa section of Tokyo where he, his wife and 3-year-old son, Joey, live upstairs and a growing stable of apprentice wrestlers live and train on the lower floors.

With 19 fledgling sumotori, including nephew Mamo, a makushita-division wrestler who is the ranking sumotori in the stable, “I need a bigger place if I’m going to bring in some more guys.”

Occasionally Atisanoe stops by to help supervise training, when his schedule permits.

Atisanoe, a University High graduate, hosts regular radio and TV programs, including appearances as “Koni-chan” on national broadcaster NHK’s education morning program for children.

Never mind that the youngsters who tune in to the Japanese language lessons were all born well after he retired from the dohyo in 1997, “Koni-chan” is a well-known figure.

“Some days are 16 hours long. It keeps me busy,” Konishiki said. “But sumo was harder; it was a 24-hours-a-day life.”

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The family said get-well cards for Akebono can be addressed to Chad Rowan c/o Moiliili Post Office, 2700 S. King St., Honolulu, HI 96826.

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