A white limousine cruises through Waimanalo and pulls up in front of a building that used to house a bank. Today, it's a tourist novelty shop. A Japanese man emerges from the limo. A large local woman steps out of the shop and the man begins to bow profusely from the hip. Deep bows. The deepest sign of respect. The man then poses with the woman for a photograph, buys a T-shirt and leaves. Sumo mom basks
in the son-riseThe scene repeats itself throughout the day. Sometimes the visitors come in limos, sometimes in charter buses. For a continual stream of Japanese tourists, it's a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage. But it's just another day in paradise for Jan Rowan, mother of a god.
The god, in this case, is Rowan's son, Chad, better known as the fearsome sumotori Akebono. Jan is still trying to get used to the idea that people will drive all the way from Waikiki just to meet her and take pictures.
"When they come to my shop, they treat me with respect," she says. "The mom gets credit for raising the son."
She recently re-opened her store, the Sumo Connection in Waimanalo, hoping to snag some of the Japanese tourist traffic that snakes through the placid windward side. For three years, the shop had been in Kapahulu, selling sumo-related products, like dolls and T-shirts.
Last week, Jan was amazingly pleasant considering that Chad was due home in a matter of hours after being away for two years and that a certain columnist kept pestering her for quotes.
AS she prepared for her son's return, Jan remembered how he was approached by a recruiter from the legendary Jesse Kuhaulua's stable. Jesse started it all for Hawaii sumotori. He broke through Japan's sumo nationalistic barrier. Since then, Hawaii wrestlers have shaken the 2,000-year-old sport to its feudal roots.
"Larry (Auweau, the recruiter) talked to him about how (sumotori) were gods and how he'd be on television and be famous," Jan says. "I knew my Chad. He used to always tell me, 'I'm going to make you real proud. I'm going to have my name up in lights!'"
But for a kid whose main talent was football and a hefty appetite, Jan wasn't sure where that fame would come from. She couldn't argue that, for Chad, who already was showing signs of enormity, sumo seemed right up his dojo.
Even though, when Chad went to Japan in 1988, his mother was sure he'd be back in six months.
"He didn't come home for two years!" she said. "I finally said, come back already! He was still in the bottom ranks."
Following in the hefty footsteps of another Hawaii-born sumotori, Konishiki, it wasn't long before Akebono lived up to his sumo name: Rising Sun. He tore through the ranks becoming one of only 66 wrestlers in the history of sumo to reach the top rank, yokozuna. Compare that to the hundreds of American athletes who have been inducted into halls of fame for football and baseball, sports that have been around less than 130 years.
Jan decided to capitalize on her son's notoriety by opening the sumo store. Outside her store is a life-size -- which is to say, huge -- bronze statue of 550-pound Akebono. It's enough to stop tour buses in their tracks.
Ironically, the Japan Sumo Association will not allow her to use her son's exact likeness or even the word "Akebono" on the T-shirts.
They can't, however, stop her from printing "Rising Sun" on the shirt in English, which is good enough for the tourists. And if the silhouette of the sumo wrestler on the shirt just happens to resemble a certain Hawaii-born yokozuna, well, what's the mother of a god supposed to do?
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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