Chris Gould marks the 15th anniversary of Konishiki’s final yusho triumph with a review of the debate which shaped – and arguably defined – contemporary sumo.

On March 22nd 1992, Konishiki Yasokichi and Kirishima Kazuhiro squared off for the makunouchi division championship. Both were ranked at ozeki; both entered the match with 12 wins, 2 losses; but that was where the similarities ended. Kirishima, at just 115 kilograms, was light for a sumotori but his body was beautifully well-muscled and equipped with astonishing strength. Konishiki, on the other hand, entered the Guinness Book of Records as the heaviest sumotori ever, his frame weighing over twice as much as Kirishima’s. The match would certainly play host to a contrast of styles.

The Yokozuna Deliberation Committee (YDC) doubtless rued the fact that, were Kirishima a little younger, he would have made a fine yokozuna, and an almightily photogenic one at that. But on this historic Sunday afternoon in Osaka, it was the gargantuan Konishiki who was within touching distance of sumo’s highest rank. Victory over his handsome arch-rival would deliver him his second Emperor’s Cup in four months and cement his status as the first non-Japanese ever to be considered for yokozuna promotion. The pressure was unbearable.

To the shrieks of a frenzied audience and the gruff tones of the 27th Kimura Shonosuke, Konishiki aimed his super-sized palms at Kirishima and pushed with all his might. Kirishima was a crafty customer who had side-stepped Konishiki on many an occasion, but even his agility was found wanting in the face of such a thunderous onslaught. As Kirishima faltered, Konishiki grabbed his prized mawashi, gritted his teeth, heaved, shoved, toiled and eventually forced his muscular opponent over the tawara.

Size had won the day, but not everybody in the arena was impressed. Fervent shouts of ‘banzai’ were counter-punched by a smattering of boos. In the context of this divided crowd, Konishiki’s finest hour gave rise to one of the most intriguing debates in sumo history, with far-reaching consequences for everyone concerned.

The background
Konishiki was born Salevaa Atisanoe in Oahu, Hawaii, on December 30th 1963. He joined Takasago-beya in the summer of 1982, having been sweet-talked by a friend of Hawaii’s first sumo superstar, Takamiyama, and then by Takamiyama himself.

The bulky teenager first graced the banzuke in September 1982 and rose to makunouchi level in just 11 basho. Exactly two years after his debut, he caused an earthquake in the sumo world by capturing the makunouchi jun-yusho (runner-up spot) in the final tournament staged at the Kuramae Kokugikan. En route to his 12 wins, he defeated the two competing yokozuna, Chiyonofuji and Takanosato, with surprising ease.

After upsetting a third yokozuna, Kitanoumi, in his first bout at the new Ryogoku Kokukigan, Konishiki’s card became firmly marked. Opponents cooked up several strategies to thwart his blistering thrusting attacks, a practice which the Hawaiian admits forced him to improve his yotzu-zumo in later years. Then, in May 1986, disaster struck. On the eighth day of the Natsu basho, Konishiki’s knee was all-but-shattered in a gruelling match against the feisty ozeki Kitao Koji. Although Konishiki staged a quite remarkable recovery, his weakened knee deprived him of an invaluable support to his huge weight, and he was never quite the same sumotori again.

After regularly posting double-figure scores for a year, Konishiki surpassed his mentor Takamiyama to become sumo’s first non-Japanese ozeki in May 1987. Aged just 23, Konishiki looked set to completely rewrite sumo history, with his then stablemaster fully confident that Konishiki would become the first yokozuna from Takasago-beya since the oyakata himself. For a while, Konishiki seemed hell-bent on fulfilling his coach’s prediction but in 1988 his knee became evermore troublesome. His career was even being written off by September 1989 when he posted a measly five wins in the Aki basho, but the behemoth answered his critics in the best possible style by securing his first yusho in the following tournament, spectacularly ending Chiyonofuji’s eight-year reign as the King of Kyushu.

In March 1990, Konishiki had the Emperor’s Cup in his sights again, wrestling his way into an historic three-fighter playoff for the title. Although he humiliated yokozuna Hokutoumi in the first round, he then floundered against Kirishima through sheer exhaustion and lost easily to Hokutoumi in the yusho-clincher. A playoff also proved the giant’s undoing in May 1991 when he won on each of the first 14 days but surrendered the title with two defeats to Asahifuji on senshuraku. He made amends with a scintillating display in November 1991, becoming the first non-Japanese to win two yusho in the process. After succumbing to the pressure in January 1992, when losses to lower-ranked opponents cost him the championship, he clinched and smothered his way to a final day showdown with Kirishima in March, victory in which finally placed his name before the YDC.

The debate
The days following Konishiki’s historic win would place some crucial sumo issues under the spotlight.

The first issue concerned the yokozuna promotion criteria. Consensus maintained that two straight yusho would guarantee promotion to the top rank. Less consensual, however, was the interpretation of ‘equivalent circumstances,’ the cloudier criterion for elevation to yokozuna. Was it satisfied by Konishiki’s two wins in the previous three tournaments? Or did it mean consecutive runner-up scores, 26 wins over two basho or 39 wins over three? And whatever ‘equivalent circumstances’ stood for, was it appropriate for a Deliberation Committee to determine?

The second major issue was that of the ‘gaijin’ yokozuna. Throughout the vast history of Japan’s national sport, there had never officially been one. The majority of sumo’s patriotic audience firmly believed – rightly or wrongly – that sumo was a sport made by the Japanese for the Japanese. What would it mean to actually admit that a gaijin could perform sumo better than the Japanese?

A third key issue concerned Konishiki’s nationality. The congratulatory telegrams read out whenever he won a yusho confirmed to Japan that he was an American. He therefore represented a country which had, less than 47 years earlier, dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and sought to destroy the very Shinto religion that underpinned sumo. Every member of the YDC was alive at the time of the A-bombs. One member, Noboru Kojima, had even written patriotic novels about World War Two. Against this backdrop, how would the Committee feel about bestowing sumo’s greatest honour on an American?

The final issue concerned Konishiki’s stupendous size. Although conventional sumo wisdom stated that the success of a rikishi depended on gaining weight steadily throughout his career, Konishiki was not envisaged as the ideally-formed sumotori. For the first time, a sport which prided itself on the size of its competitors would actually consider whether there was an optimum or maximum weight for sumotori – or, at least, a yokozuna.

The historic events
On 24th March 1992, two days after Konishiki’s massacre of Kirishima, the Yokozuna Deliberation Committee staged arguably its most famous meeting. Afterwards, the Committee Chairman, Ueda Hideo, presented himself to the media to announce the all-important decision on Konishiki.

‘We wanted to make doubly sure that Konishiki is worthy to be a grand champion,’ Ueda revealed. ‘Therefore, we decided to wait for another tournament.’

The words pierced Konishiki’s thumping heart. Despite his having won two tournaments out of three, amassing 38 wins over the three basho, he would have to defeat 13 more opponents in order to realise his yokozuna dream. Columnists in the American press abandoned themselves to uproar and accused the YDC of blatant anti-Americanism. The economist Louis LeClerc, while censuring the Japanese government for ‘unfairly’ protecting its companies from American competition, cited Konishiki’s non-promotion as an example.

Criticisms in the US were further fuelled by the antics of Noboru Kojima, the YDC member of jingoistic novel-writing fame. In a media interview shortly after the YDC meeting, Kojima suggested that the huge Hawaiian did not possess ‘hinkaku,’ a word which is derived from ‘hin,’ the Japanese translation of ‘grace, elegance and refinement.’ A nationalistic sub-editor then poured petrol on the flames of controversy by headlining the piece: ‘We Don’t Need a Foreign Yokozuna’.

As if Konishiki’s preparation was not being disrupted enough, events took an even more violent downturn on April 20th. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan’s leading financial newspaper, attributed a quote to Konishiki which suggested that he had been denied promotion due to ‘discrimination’. Almost simultaneously, the New York Times alleged that Konishiki had said the following: ‘If I were Japanese, I would be yokozuna already’.

Now it was the turn of the sumo association (NSK) to express outrage. Angrily summoning the 250-kilogram Hawaiian to their offices, the NSK demanded an explanation for this apparent outburst. The enormous ozeki was shell-shocked and insisted he had been ‘misrepresented’. After his employers chillingly warned him to ‘be more humble’, Konishiki attended a press conference at which he tearfully denied making the remarks attributed to him. As the incident descended into a farce with interventions from the Japanese Foreign Minister and then Prime Minister, the damage to Konishiki’s self-esteem was irreparable. Two weeks before the most important tournament of his life, and he was mentally in no fit state to compete.

The real explanation
Consensus remains in the sumo world that Konishiki could not possibly have been responsible for the ‘quotes’ in the newspapers. It would be impossible for a newspaper – most of all a non-Japanese publication – to interview an ozeki by telephone, as the New York Times claimed. The NYT would have to try a bit harder than that to interview someone of such importance in the sumo world. It appears that the version of events offered by Konishiki is correct; namely, that a Hawaiian apprentice conducted the interviews on his behalf. One assumes that the naïve apprentice answered some heavily-loaded questions from journalists eager to stir up discord, and was horrified to discover how his remarks had been twisted.

The real issues
The early 1990s were times of mutual suspicion between Japan and America, not least because the latter feared the economic rise of the former and resented having subsidised it in the 1940s. Social commentators from both countries enjoyed pointing the finger at each other, with incidents like the Konishiki Affair providing the perfect excuse for an intellectual ruckus. But underneath the tabloid headlines, sumo was conducting a profound exercise in identity shaping.

Kojima’s comments on hinkaku were certainly inflammatory, but were not expressly intended to pinpoint racial differences between Americans and Japanese. Rather, they were intended as a warning over Konishiki’s size and physical condition. The fact was: he was too big. Since his injury, he had become much slower and less agile. The constant strain on his back and knees (now numb with painkilling injections) left him rather limited in the technique department, meaning that at the time of his promotion-drive he was winning virtually every match by yorikiri. In addition, each time he was sidestepped by a smaller foe, he had no means of rescuing the match, and some of his losses were – in the words of one YDC member – ‘ugly’. This, of course, was a far cry from the NSK’s conception of hinkaku, an alleged prerequisite for a yokozuna.

Both the YDC and NSK were beginning to see the effects of Konishiki’s success on the new recruits coming in, many of whom were stuffing themselves in the hope of matching the giant’s girth. Sumo authorities genuinely feared that making a yokozuna of Konishiki would make a champion out of ‘bulge’ at the expense of technique. Furthermore, they interpreted another of Konishiki’s misrepresented quotes from 1984, ‘sumo is a fight’, as a sign that the Hawaiian valued ‘winning at all costs’ over ‘perfecting technique’, an attitude which they were loathe to promote.

However, the man who enables us to best understand the Konishiki debate, elucidating most of the arguments behind his non-promotion, is Kitao Koji. Had the Hawaiian not suffered his dreadful injury at the hands of Kitao, he would surely have moved about more elegantly at the time of his promotion push. But it was the relationship between Kitao and the YDC that would unwittingly thwart Konishiki’s yokozuna aspirations.

In July 1986, the NSK suffered a banzuke headache. With five ozeki, and a potential sixth in Hoshi, sumo’s second rank would soon fall foul of overcrowding regulations. The YDC had a bright idea; they would use the ‘equivalent circumstances’ criterion to confer yokozuna status upon Kitao, freeing up an extra ozeki slot for Hoshi. Thus, despite only posting consecutive runner-up scores, Kitao was promoted to the top rank.

Alas, though, the NSK soon regretted elevating Kitao so quickly. He was still only 23 and, although some very successful yokozuna have held the rank from a younger age, he seemed ill-equipped to cope with the responsibility. Under his new name of Futahaguro, his relationship with his stablemates became increasingly fractious and gave rise to an jungyo incident in late-1987. Then, with the New Year approaching, Futahaguro became embroiled in another incident which resulted in Tatsunami oyakata’s wife getting hurt as she tried to intervene. Futahaguro was asked to resign from the NSK immediately, the first yokozuna to leave active sumo without winning a single yusho. Shocked by a disastrous yokozuna promotion based on ‘equivalent circumstances,’ the NSK and YDC were determined to interpret this criterion more strictly in future.

Their resolve to do so was buttressed by the underperformance of two other yokozuna. Onokuni Yasushi, who was of similar build to Konishiki but at least 35 kilograms lighter, became the first yokozuna to post a losing score (7-8) over fifteen days in September 1989. Then, Asahifuji Seiya, promoted after winning consecutive basho, lasted just eight tournaments on the first rung before retiring with a whimper. With a third yokozuna, Hokutoumi Nobuyoshi, in decline at the time of the Konishiki Affair (he retired the following month), the NSK yielded to no-one in their belief that the next yokozuna was to set the sumo world alight. Unfortunately, given his injury record, they were unable to place that level of confidence in Konishiki.
   
The consequences for sumo
Konishiki admitted years later that the events of March/April 1992 hurt him badly. Understandably, given the appalling build-up, he faltered in the all-important tournament of May 1992 and watched in frustration as his fellow countryman, Akebono Taro, thrust his way to the yusho. Within eight months, Akebono – not Konishiki – would be crowned sumo’s first non-Japanese yokozuna, leaving the ‘Dump Truck’ to embark upon an excruciating battle merely to preserve his makunouchi status.

Fifteen years on, though, no-one can doubt the phenomenal impact of Konishiki’s promotion challenge. Alarmed by the trouble caused, the NSK initially ceased taking on foreign recruits, only to reverse its policy once it realised that foreigners like Konishiki might actually have contributed to sumo’s popularity. Had the NSK not scouted so zealously upon reopening its doors to foreign competition, it would never have purloined the talents of the men who define sumo today. By thrusting the possibility of a gaijin yokozuna into the Japanese conscience for the first time, Konishiki paved the way not only for Akebono’s smooth promotion in 1993, but for Musashimaru’s in 1999 and Asashoryu’s in 2003. And, in the wake of Akebono’s success and Kojima’s death, the word hinkaku is used much more carefully in sumo circles, denoting the qualities of a yokozuna rather than the qualities of the Japanese.

It is wholly unsurprising that Konishiki now enjoys cult celebrity status. He inspired a new army of followers when fighting extreme adversity in his later sumo career and now appeals to a younger generation of fans with his weekday children’s TV show. He also entertains audiences as a disco dancer, part-time commercial rap artist and bit-part movie star (e.g. Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, 2006). His popularity on both sides of the Pacific was spotlighted in October 2005 when, as guest announcer for the Grand Sumo Las Vegas event, he spent hours signing autographs. He is also an active driver of the ‘Konishiki Kids’ project, which enables children from humble Hawaiian beginnings to visit Japan for a week at the big man’s expense.

He may never have reached the very top but his legacy outstrips even his girth. They may not have realised it, but when Asashoryu and Hakuho faced off on the final day of this year’s Osaka basho, their sumo success was directly linked to events in the same arena on the same dohyo, exactly 15 years before.



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