By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Lynn Matsuoka stands in front of one of her drawings
with her son, Jesse, at their Kahala home. Matsuoka has
achieved much acclaim for her works depicting sumo
wrestlers and hula dancers. Jesse's father
was a sumo wrestler.

Capturing tradition
in a brushstroke

The ancient arts of sumo
and hula come alive through
a local artist's sketches

By Susan Kreifels
Star-Bulletin

Two small boys, one a measured distance behind the other, slipped down the long aisle of the dressing room, invisible among the giant men. Except to one.

Yokozuna Akebono sat at the far end, watching the boys approach. They stopped six feet from the grand champion and bowed deeply. The boy in front, tiny for his 15 years, held a piece of folded material in his raised hands as if it was a newborn.

In the most honorific Japanese, he whispered "thank you, thank you, thank you," his tears flowing as the two inched backward, still bowing deeply.

Akebono nodded in acknowledgment as the two small bodies disappeared among the giants.

From the sketch pad of memories that artist Lynn Matsuoka has collected over 25 years inside sumo, this is her favorite. It's the stuff, in her words, that has made Akebono, Waimanalo's Chad Rowan and the first foreigner to earn the sport's top rank, the "most special person in sumo."

It's what finally drew her to Hawaii. What turned her brushes to hula. What made Matsuoka understand "aloha" beyond a tourist's concept.

The scrawny 15-year-old boy bowing before Akebono that day, Matsuoka learned, was a new sumo referee. From a poor family, he looked like a street urchin in his much-too-large, hand-me-down kimono. Akebono sensed the boy's deep shame in a culture that dwells on such emotions, and bought him a new kimono.

"He was a nobody in the sumo world," Matsuoka said about the boy. "But Chad saw his suffering. Nobody else would do this. I've never seen such a display. It was like a pauper approaching the prince who saved his soul."

Although Akebono is the master of "stink eye" in the sumo ring, "he embodies the spirit of aloha," said Matsuoka, who befriended the wrestler the second day he arrived in Japan. "It holds him back from his potential because he has too much heart."

Matsuoka knows her sumo. Currently one of the English-language commentators for Japan's NHK public broadcasting, she spent two decades inside the sumo dressing room to sketch -- a privilege for anyone, especially a woman.

Her work with Akebono helped convince her to move to the islands she had always loved during brief stops here. And when she started to sketch hula, she started to understand Akebono's kindness.

Used to feeling the outsider in sumo, the hula groups "wouldn't let me (feel that way). Finally I got it. Aloha wasn't just a tourist word."

Now in her Kahala home, hula hangs in her gallery alongside sumo. Dancers line up for inspection by kumu hula William Kahakuleilehua "Sonny" Ching before Merrie Monarch competition. Nearby, Konishiki, Hawaii's Salevaa Atisanoe, sprawls on his massive belly and pokes trunk-sized fingers at a computer game before a sumo match. The green eyes of Akebono stare down an opponent in the sumo ring.

First sketching with a graphite pencil, then later filling in with oil pastels, Matsuoka's art shares common motion: ancient traditions come alive.

"I'm not interested in sports, I'm interested in preserving culture," she said.

Matsuoka brought international attention to sumo through her art. The New Yorker, a former Vogue fashion illustrator and network TV courtroom artist, first arrived in Tokyo in 1973 to work for a major department store.

By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Lynn Matsuoka at her drawing table.

"I saw my first sumo fight and that was it. I wanted to own it on paper. Drawing them was like digging into big, gooey chocolate cake with both hands."

But getting sumo on her sketch pad was no easy stroke. She first had to dig her way through the bureaucracy surrounding the sport. With the help of a Japanese friend, she made it into the dressing room. And with the support of sumo great Chiyonofuji Mitsugu, who appreciated her art of him, she stayed there for the next 25 years despite opposition from the Japan Sumo Association.

Now hula is the living ancient tradition that "puts me in another dimension, mesmerizes me." Matsuoka has already made a name in Hawaii for her hula art. She won first place from Hawaii Publishers Association for illustration in all print media, and the same for Honolulu Publishers Association.

Besides documenting hula, Matsuoka also has another goal here. She hopes to paint a large mural on the wall of a well-traveled place, such as the Ala Moana Center, to "celebrate Hawaii's gift to sumo, to give Hawaii a sense of its place in Asia."

That gift started with Takamiyama (Hawaii's Jesse Kuhaulua). Then came Konishiki, Akebono and Musashimaru (Fiamalu Penitani). Konishiki became the first foreigner to reach ozeki, or champion, and Musashimaru earned the title later.

Matsuoka says the Hawaii men "changed the face of sumo," not only by getting through the invisible social barriers, but by changing its physical look as well. The Hawaiians introduced boom boxes and the voice of "Iz" into the dressing room, as well as the colorful mawashi, or loincloth/belt, worn in the ring instead of the traditional black one.

The sport now virtually has closed the door on new foreigners, which Matsuoka believes was necessary to maintain tradition.

"Never again will there be this moment of time in the ancient sport. The Hawaiians did something in a 2,000-year-old esoteric life that nobody else could penetrate. These guys deserve an Academy Award."

(Matsuoka is planning an art show in November. She can be contacted by e-mail at sumo@japan.co.jp or by calling 732-4856.)