Category Archives: Japan

by | 4 October 2006 · 6:00 pm

Baptist Evangelical Preoccupations in Japan, 1880s

In their approach to evangelism, Baptist missionaries gave priority to Bible translation and literature distribution…. The chief reason for the preoccupation with Scripture translation was the conviction that the Greek word for baptism should be rendered by a term clearly denoting immersion. The time and resources devoted to this effort could have been more fruitfully invested in churches or schools, for Japanese Baptists eventually adopted the interdenominational translation of the Bible in preference to the immersionist version….

Unlike the other denominations, Baptists were reluctant to utilize Christian education as a means of evangelism, for they sought more immediate results through direct means. True, most Baptist missionaries taught pupils informally, and by 1888 four schools had been started for girls. But no school was established for boys until 1895, when Duncan Academy opened in Tokyo. The delay was costly, for Christian schools–34 were reported in 1882 and 72 in 1888–produced the majority of converts in the 1880s. At a time when churches bore the onus of foreign colonies, the schools, being compatible with the traditional value system, served as a spearhead for the gospel and the “birthplace of the church.” It has even been argued that “the Christian school was the only field of Christian evangelism that could be called successful.”

Lacking a boys’ school, Baptists failed to attract and develop strong Japanese leaders–with two exceptions. One was Kawakatsu, a proselyte from Ballagh’s group of converts. The other was Chiba Yugoro, who was sent to America for college and seminary training. Baptists had no seedbed of leadership like the Yokohama schools conducted by Hepburn, Ballagh, and Robbins Brown [Presbyterians who founded Meiji Gakuin University]. There was no Baptist equivalent of the Kumamoto Band, converts of Leroy Janes in Kyushu [many of whom went on to Doshisha University in Kyoto], nor of the Sapporo Band, followers of William Clark [“Boys Be Ambitious”] in Hokkaido. From such dynamic teachers came the early giants of Protestantism in Japan.

SOURCE: The Southern Baptist Mission in Japan, 1889-1989, by F. Calvin Parker (University Press of America, 1991), pp. 18-19

From what I understand, the Southern Baptist International Mission Board is once again concentrating almost all its foreign mission efforts on “church-planting” rather than schools. It no longer pays salaries for the foreign professors at the Southern Baptist Seinan Gakuin University seminary, as it used to from its earliest days.

UPDATE: In googling references for this, I discovered that a true giant among missionary educators—of both Japanese and Americans—died in April this year (while I was in Japan). He was a man of my father’s generation, whose kids were classmates and schoolmates and worthy successors—third generation MKs. My heart goes out to them. Elaine Woo of the Los Angeles Times wrote an obituary worth reading in full. Here’s how it starts.

When Otis Cary interrogated Japanese prisoners during World War II, he softened them with gifts of magazines, cigarettes and chocolates. He broke through their reserve with humor. And he spoke to them in flawless Japanese — shocking from a blond-haired American.

Cary spoke like a native because he was one — the son and grandson of New England missionaries in Japan. With missionarylike ardor, he proselytized for the Allied cause, convincing many of the prisoners to cooperate in efforts to end the war and help rebuild Japan as a democracy.

“Prolonged contact with Americans in the prison camps clearly had an impact on many prisoners, and for none more than those influenced by Otis Cary,” wrote Ulrich Straus, a former diplomat whose study of Japanese prisoners of war, “The Anguish of Surrender,” was published in 2003.

Cary, 84, who died of pneumonia April 14 in Oakland, Calif., played a unique role in U.S.-Japan relations during and after World War II. He was one of the 1,100 Japanese linguists trained by the Navy to serve as interrogators, translators and interpreters after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. For more than four decades after the war, he bridged cultures as a professor of American studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto.

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by | 2 October 2006 · 8:21 pm

The Cultural Revolution Hits Seinan Seminary in Japan

In the fall of 1970 [the year right-wing novelist Mishima Yukio committed ritual suicide] the [cultural] battlefield shifted to the seminary campus in Fukuoka, where most [Japan Baptist] Convention ministers were trained. The seminary was–and is–a part of Seinan Gakuin University, which was plagued by student rebellions in 1969…. The rebellions were nationwide in scope, affecting private and public universities alike, though carried out by a militant minority and not by the majority of students. At Aoyama Gakuin University (Methodist) in Tokyo and Kanto Gakuin University (American Baptist) in Yokohama, the theology departments became so involved as to self-destruct over a period of time. Neither has been reopened. Belatedly, though no less ominously, a group of dissident students at the Fukuoka seminary called a strike in September 1970.

The seminary had 34 students: 23 in the theology department of the university and 11 in an unaccredited Bible school. The striking students numbered only 10 at first and never exceeded 11, but they forced the cancellation of all classes until January 1971. With the backing of a few area pastors, they assailed the faculty for not speaking out jointly against the Vietnam War, the Security Treaty, the Baptist congress, Expo ’70, and government efforts to nationalize Yasukuni Shrine, where the war dead are enshrined. A theology that does not address such issues is invalid, the students declared; any evangelism that does not attack the evil structures of society is incomplete.

These social activists declared that the seminary was bankrupt and not salvageable, that the faculty should resign en bloc to clear the way for a new beginning. George Hays had the misfortune of being seminary dean at the time. On October 7, citing “two instances of misunderstanding related to the language,” he resigned the position, no longer confident that he could negotiate with the students. Hays was succeeded by Professor Sekiya….

Numerous meetings were held, some of them loud and boisterous, in quest of reconciliation. Position papers were demanded of each faculty member, and each was interrogated as though an accused heretic at an inquisition. No exceptions were made of the three missionary teachers: Hays, Bob Culpepper, Vera Campbell. Culpepper returned from an emergency furlough in November 1970, in the midst of the turmoil, and went on trial as the others had done. All three handled themselves well and helped the seminary to survive. When the new school year opened in Apri1 1971, however, total enrollment was down to 22. Not until the next decade did it reach 34 again.

Ozaki Shuichi has said that the most tragic result of the strike was the loss of some very promising students to the gospel ministry. If so, a close second was the loss of Ozaki himself to the seminary faculty. This New Testament scholar, second-generation preacher, and sometime interpreter to Billy Graham resigned during the struggle. Consequently, he was scathingly denounced as irresponsible and harassed by late-night phone calls. Dean Sekiya also got calls at night. The harassments came to an end when Ozaki’s daughter Yoko, the seminary librarian, was struck and killed by a train–an apparent suicide. So great was the shock that 16 years were to pass before Ozaki accepted an invitation to speak at the seminary, though he lived in Fukuoka all this time.

SOURCE: The Southern Baptist Mission in Japan, 1889-1989, by F. Calvin Parker (University Press of America, 1991), pp. 238-240

Nowadays Seinan [‘Southwestern’] Seminary is independent of the (U.S.) Southern Baptist Convention, which since the 1970s has imposed stricter doctrinal controls at all the major seminaries in the U.S. (Southern in Louisville, Southeastern in Wake Forest, Southwestern in Fort Worth, and New Orleans). Seinan Seminary pays the salaries of several former missionaries who would likely have trouble passing the current SBC creed tests.

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by | 2 October 2006 · 4:29 pm

The Sixties Hit Southern Baptist Families in Japan

In 1967 the [Japan Baptist] Mission had voted to encourage couples whose children were grown to consider work opportunities in outlying areas. But no pressures were ever applied, and the clustering of missionaries in central areas continued to bother [Japan Baptist] Convention strategists. Sizing up the problem, one Mission wit compared missionaries to manure. “When spread out,” he said, “they do good; when piled up, they raise a stink.”

Unlike the ’50s, when several couples in outlying areas taught their own children with Calvert School materials and in a few cases sent them to Japanese schools, in the ’60s most parents insisted on living near an English school, and a few demanded a particular school. A major reason for this trend was the growing emphasis on quality education in America, especially as it affected Baptist colleges and universities. A number of Baptist schools that formerly accepted any high school graduate had grown selective, some of them highly selective. To be assured of acceptance, MKs [= missionary kids] now had to submit good SAT or ACT scores.

American military schools were still available in several places, including Fukuoka, but their number was decreasing. To fill a void or meet new needs, international schools had been established in Kyoto (1957), Sapporo (1958), Hiroshima (1962), and Nagoya (1963). Some years would elapse before these schools could offer the higher grades. Most children of high school age, and some of middle school age, attended one of the older schools in Tokyo, Yokohama, or Kobe. Dormitory facilities were available at Christian Academy in Tokyo and Canadian Academy in Kobe, as noted earlier, but not at Tokyo’s American School in Japan, the choice of many parents. So in 1962 the Mission opened its own dormitory in Mitaka near ASIJ.

Baptist Dormitory, as it was called, looked like a dream come true. Built by Homat Homes, the neat and spacious two-story building accommodated a dozen or more students of both sexes in middle or high school. Sadly, the operation was soon plagued with troubles, dashing the dream of a Christian home environment for MKs. The supervisors were changed rather often, and some of them were quite the opposite in discipline and manner. Some were considered too strict and some too permissive. The parents and the trustees sometimes clashed on how the dormitory should be run or how a controversial rule should be worded. It was agreed, for example, that smoking should be strictly prohibited in the dormitory and on the premises. But should a student be retained who smoked off the premises, in violation of the Japanese law forbidding the use of tobacco by minors? The trustees said no, which caused a family to move to Tokyo against their wishes. So divisive and irresolvable were various issues that twice during the decade the trustees voted to close the facility. Each time they then yielded to parents’ demands that it be kept open. To complicate matters, sometimes a parent with a child in the dormitory served as a trustee, contrary to what some considered a sound administrative principle. At any rate, the dormitory was sadly disruptive of the Mission’s fellowship.

The MK problem came to the fore in a shocking manner at the 1969 Mission meeting. The meeting was held July 29 to August 1, not at Amagi Sanso, but at the Kokusai Takamatsu Hotel on Shikoku. On the closing night some of the young people held a “drinking party” in the hotel annex where they were staying. Descriptions of what took place ranged from “drinking only a tiny amount of whisky in a coke” to heavy drinking that left the imbibers “dead drunk” and “staggering.” Some children who witnessed the scene “spent the night sitting in the hall, afraid to return to their room.” The incident caused grave concern throughout the Mission for its effect on the smaller children and on the Christian witness in Takamatsu.

That autumn the dormitory supervisors sent five boys home for one week because of improper conduct. Subsequently the trustees expelled three of the boys for the remainder of the school year. The charges included smoking, theft of several items (even an airplane propeller from a nearby airfield), wrongful possession of dormitory keys that provided access to the girls’ section, obscene writing and speech, damage to property, and intimidation of younger boys with threats of bodily harm. Some parents expressed regret that they had opposed the closing of the dormitory years before. At the end of the 1969-70 school year, in which 12 students had been accommodated, the dorm was closed “for lack of applicants.” The facility was turned into a guest house and later sold.

SOURCE: The Southern Baptist Mission in Japan, 1889-1989, by F. Calvin Parker (University Press of America, 1991), pp. 232-233

A couple of the decades covered in this book intersect a lot with my own biography. I was part of the inaugural class at Kyoto International School, which began as Kyoto Christian Day School, using Calvert School curriculum materials. Although I didn’t attend ASIJ, I later caused my share of trouble at another school’s dormitory during the Sixties.

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by | 22 September 2006 · 4:55 am

Comfy-chair Fieldwork on a Japanese Cinema Dialect

I recently saw for the first time (via Netflix) a Japanese film from 2002 entitled Twilight Samurai (Tasogare Seibei). It’s a wonderfully restrained and down-to-earth portait (reviewed here and here) of a dutiful but impoverished petty samurai aching to live as a plain farmer (not—like Tom Cruise—aching to die with The Last Samurai).

But an added attraction for me was the combination of English subtitles and a Japanese regional dialect, Yamagata-ben, or at least a Shochiku Film rendition of some of its key features. The dialects of the northern (Tohoku, lit. ‘northeast’) part of Honshu are collectively known as Tohoku-ben, or somewhat less diplomatically as zuzu-ben for their failure to distinguish /i/ and /u/, rendering both as a high central unrounded vowel [ɨ], which then of course fails to palatalize /s/ and /t/, so that sushi, shishi ‘lion’, and susu ‘soot’ all sound something like [sɨsɨ], which can be spelled susu, since /u/ is not rounded in standard Japanese either.

I haven’t been able to find much online in English about Tohoku-ben except for a few sketchy accounts, the most extensive being a sketch of Miyagi-ben by a former JET volunteer. (Yamagata prefecture is on the Japan Sea side of Miyagi prefecture in southern Tohoku.) So I thought I’d offer a few general impressions of (Shochiku emblematic) Yamagata-ben from my second viewing of the film.

/s/ > /h/ in suffixes – I noted the kin terms otohan ‘father’, okahan ‘mother’, and babahan ‘grandmother’, the names Tomoe-han, Naota-han, and the polite expressions gokurou-han ‘thank you’, oboete-naharu ‘do you remember?’, and oyu wakasute kumahen ‘can you boil some water for me?’. This lends a Kansai flavor to the dialect.

/ai/, /ae/ > /ee/ – This is not uncommon elsewhere, but it generally signals plain—even rough—talk. In Yamagata, it also occurs in polite speech. In the film I noted omee ‘you’, deekiree ‘really don’t like’, and nee ‘not’ (as in sabusukunee ‘not sad’).

/-masu/ vs. /-masunee/ – Polite negatives in Yamagata-ben sound like affirmative confirmations in standard Japanese. I noted ikimasunee ‘won’t go’, mattaku arimasunee ‘absolutely don’t have’.

/ne/ = /no/ tag – Yamagata no(u) performs the functions of the standard Japanese tag particle ne(e). In the film, I noted yoi ko da nou ‘(you’re a) good girl, aren’t you?’. (My usage tends toward /na/, thanks to my high school days in Kansai.)

/e/ > [i] – The backing of the high front vowel /i/ to [ɨ] (and its merger with /u/) leaves room for the mid front vowel /e/ to migrate upward. I noted sinko ‘joss stick’ and madi, madi! ‘wait, wait!’. However, there were plenty of unraised /e/ as well, so I suspect the actors were pulling their punches to maintain intelligibility and relying instead on just a few emblematic raisings to give a flavor of the dialect. (This is true of most, if not all, renditions of “dialect” on stage and screen.)

de gozaimasu > de gansu ‘the polite copula‘ – This remapping was so strikingly regular and transparent that I suspect it was not just one of the more salient emblems of Yamagata polite speech, but one of the easiest for dialog coaches to teach: owasure de gansho ka ‘had you forgotten?’; sou de gansuta ‘yes, it was’; omoe-dasu no wa iya de gansu ‘I don’t want to think about it’; ayamaru no wa ante ho de gansho ‘I’m not the one who should apologize’ (I’m not too sure whether my ante ho should be anta no hou ‘your side’ or hantee hou ‘the opposite side’). However, I did catch one instance of de gozeemasunee ‘is not’ (= de gozaimasen).

/-t-/ > [d], /-d-/ > [nd] – Unvoiced obstruents tend to get voiced medially, while voiced obstruents get prenasalized. I didn’t hear a lot of this. Maybe it would reduce intelligibility too much for the audience. Among the examples I noted were: odohan ‘father’, todemo suzuree ‘very rude’, and madi, madi ‘wait, wait’.

Finally, the grammatical construction mou ii de ba (= mo ii deshou) ‘that’s enough, isn’t it?’

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by | 21 September 2006 · 8:13 am

Sumo’s Female Executives: Okamisan

Among the long list of expectations Yokozuna Akebono faced were that he become a Japanese citizen and that, believe it or not, he get married. Japanese citizenship is a requirement for oyakata [‘stable bosses’], which as a yokozuna [‘grand champion’] he was almost certain to become. While marriage is not an actual Kyōkai [‘Association’] requirement for its oyakata, tradition dictates that one must be married; it is understood that a heya [‘stable’] cannot be run by an oyakata alone. An oyakata’s okamisan [‘headmistress’] does far more than act as a kind of mom away from mom for the heya’s deshi [‘apprentices’], many of whom are still kids. In many cases, the okamisan is a sumo-beya’s primary administrator. She organizes kōenkai [‘fan club’] functions and dinners with other friends and supporters. She can also be involved in recruitment. If the heya has a sekitori [‘paid professional’], she organizes everything related to his promotion parties and his wedding—sometimes right down to introducing prospective brides. In many cases, she handles all of the money coming through the heya. Hers is the only position of importance and respect for any woman in the Nihon Sumo Kyōkai.

SOURCE: Gaijin Yokozuna: A Biography of Chad Rowan, by Mark Panek (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2006), p. 230

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by | 18 September 2006 · 9:21 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Poi-sute

For all the sign-deciphering I did during my months in Japan earlier this year, I’m surprised how long it took me to notice “No littering” signs, which are often rendered in a katakana + kanji combination: ポイ捨て禁止 poi-sute kinshi ‘casual-discard forbidden’. The verb 捨てる suteru means ‘to throw away, discard’ as in the famous legend of Obasuteyama, a mountain where old women were left to die after outliving their usefulness. (I’m not sure if the men were left on a separate Ojisuteyama.) And ぽいと poi-to means ‘casually throwing or discarding something’ (according to my electronic Super Daijirin).

The photo above shows a set of four bilingual anti-smoking signs that can be found in many train stations in Japan. The English version of the sign on the bottom right says, Posters saying “Don’t litter with cigarette butts” are like children scolding adults with paintbrushes. It must be a Zen koan of an advanced type that exceeds my level of enlightenment, because I don’t quite get the point.

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by | 14 September 2006 · 9:54 pm

Asia Watch on "Sea of Japan" vs. "East Sea"

Asia Watch presents a 27-point rebuttal to a Korea.net video that argues for renaming the Sea of Japan as the East Sea.

In summary: This video ignores the claim that “Sea of Japan” came into widespread usage in the early 19th century. Instead, it presents studies of pre-19th century maps, none of which discredit the findings of Japanese researchers with regard to the 19th century. After failing to discredit Japanese claims, it shows that the name “East Sea” has been used by Koreans for 2000 years. It then claims that the entire world is obligated to print foreign terms for seas alongside their traditionally-established native language terms, in accordance with a recommendation of a UN organization (but only in the case of the “East Sea”). The video attempts to disguise the anti-Japanese Korean ultranationalist agenda behind a thin veil of academic arguments, and does a remarkable horrible job. If this is the best argument the Korean government can produce, I doubt they’ll be winning over many converts through the spread of this video.

via Japundit

Why stop at the Sea of Japan? How about the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Tonkin, the Marianas Trench, the Gulf of Siam/Thailand, and the Gulf of Mexico? Who gave the Coral Sea to the coral? Don’t the sea cucumbers have as valid a claim, or the moray eels? I say let’s restore the proper name for the English Channel: The Sleeve.

UPDATE: I was going to ask who gave the Bay of Pigs to the porkers, but its Spanish name is Bahía de Cochinos ‘Bay of Triggerfish‘. Cochinos are only metaphorically disgusting in behavior or appearance—like pigs, though nowhere near as intelligent. Also:

Some species of triggerfish are known to make a sound akin to a grunt or snarl when taken out of the water.

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by | 14 September 2006 · 6:19 pm

Sumo’s Appeal for the Waka/Taka Brothers and Others

THE NAMES “WAKAHANADA” and “Takahanada” meant little of poetic significance. The “waka” and “taka” parts merely evoked their father and uncle, while “hanada” was their real last name. But among those watching in February 1988, it was understood that the boys would one day earn the right to take on the great names “Wakanohana” and “Takanohana.”

Why a young Japanese would want to take up the severe life associated with the national sport, while far less bizarre than when applied to an American, is a question that deserves attention. The total number of the [Sumo] Kyokai’s competitors usually hovers around only 800 in a country of some 120 million people, while baseball and soccer attract a far greater number of Japan’s promising athletes. Some join sumo, believe it or not, because the sumo world is a place where big guys can exist honorably without being teased. Teasing and bullying go on far past adolescence in Japan. Much is made in cultural definitions of Japan as a place of social conformity, and pressure to conform is indeed very real there. But rather than through some kind of Orwellian fear tactics, in practice the social pressure comes in the form of people being relentlessly annoying any time they see something even slightly out of the ordinary. A bigger-than-aver-age Japanese man looks different from most people, and thus becomes the object of constant ridicule, both from those he knows (in the form of obligatory fat jokes at absolutely every social encounter) and those he doesn’t (“Ah, Mr. Tanaka! It’s nice to meet you. Wow, you sure are big. How much do you weigh, anyway?”). For many overweight Japanese teenage boys who may never have had an interest in sport and who find themselves at the age when teasing is at its fiercest, sumo is a way out of mainstream Japan. The saddest part may be that the middle of the banzuke [‘rankings’] is clogged with nonathletic types with no hope of ever reaching the salaried ranks who’ve committed themselves to sumo as an alternative way of life: their topknots turn their size from points of obligatory ridicule to points of honor.

Other Japanese rikishi are recruited from rural areas with little economic opportunity. A former sekitori [‘professional wrestler’] explained, “Some kids, they come to the stable, but the ones the oyakata [‘stablemaster’] scout, they go to their house, they go to their parents, they give ’em a million yen. ‘Give me your boy for sumo.’ These boys are fifteen years old, and their parents are like, ‘A million yen!’ These guys are from the mountains; they don’t see that much money. ‘Oh, okay, okay! You go do sumo!'” They join sumo as a means of support and often toil for years in the lower ranks with no hope of making it, fortunate to be fed and housed. Other Japanese join in a rare show of national pride: “Because it is kokugi,” the national sport, one boy in the jonokuchi [lowest] division told me. Still others join as Jesse Kuhaulua [raised on Maui] had, as a natural progression of their junior high, high school, and/or college sumo careers.

Masaru and Koji Hanada joined because they were born into the sport. Sons of the great Ozeki Takanohana (the first) and nephews of the great Yokozuna Wakanohana (the first), they had sumo in their blood. While Chad Rowan had not known the meaning of the term “sumo-beya” [‘sumo stable’] until he was eighteen, the Hanadas had been raised in one. Young Koji Hanada entered his first sumo tournament when he was in third grade—and won. Six years after setting up his own Fujishima-Beya upon retiring in 1982, Fujishima Oyakata gave in to the relentless pleas from his boys by letting them formally become his deshi. Masaru Hanada’s 2000 autobiography offers a poignant account of the boys declaring themselves no longer Fujishima Oyakata’s sons, upon moving out of Fujishima-Beya’s top-floor apartment and down into a big shared room below, but rikishi under his charge.

By official registration day, Takahanada weighed a healthy 258 pounds, bigger than most of the other boys and a full 40 pounds heavier and nearly an inch taller than his older brother. And unlike the rest of the shin-deshi [‘new apprentices’] registering that day, Waka and Taka had already proved themselves on the dohyo [= ‘in the ring’]. Competing in high school, Masaru (Waka) had taken the All-Japan Senior High School yusho [tournament championship], while his younger brother had easily taken the Kanto District Junior High School yusho. Where Chad Rowan had come from nowhere into a sport as foreign to him as the language, these boys were sumo’s Ken Griffey Jr. and Barry Bonds.

SOURCE: Gaijin Yokozuna: A Biography of Chad Rowan, by Mark Panek (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2006), pp. 122-123

Well, the money must hold considerable appeal for the foreign wrestlers. At the end of Day 5 in the September Basho: two Mongolians, yokozuna Asashoryu and maegashira-6 Ama, are 5-0. Just one loss behind, at 4-1, are Bulgarian ozeki Kotooshu, Japanese ozeki Chiyotaikai, Mongolian ozeki Hakuho, Japanese sekiwake Kotomitsuki, Russian maegashira-1 Roho, Japanese maegashira-11 Homasho, and Korean maegashira-15 Kasugao. I would dearly love to see tiny Ama win the tournament.

UPDATE, Day 6: Asashoryu lost, leaving Ama (now 6-0) in sole possession of the lead!

UPDATE, Day 7: Ama lost, so now two Mongolians (Asa and Ama), one Russian (Roho), and one Japanese (Kotomitsuki) are tied for the lead at 6-1.

UPDATE, Day 8: Kotomitsuki loses, leaving the other three at 7-1.

UPDATE, Day 9: Tiny Ama (185 cm, 115 kg) went up against the giant Estonian Baruto (197 cm, 174 kg) and won! Well, technically, Baruto defeated himself by fumidashi, stepping backwards out of the ring while facing Ama. Asa beat Roho in the hard-fought final bout, so the two Mongolians still share the lead at 8-1.

UPDATE, Day 10: Asa and Ama now share the lead at 9-1, with Roho and Ama’s Ajigawa stablemate Aminishiki one loss behind, at 8-2.

UPDATE, Day 11: Asa and Ama now share the lead at 10-1, while Roho and Aminishiki have both dropped back to 8-3, alongside Chiyotaikai, Futeno, and Hokutoriki. Unbelievable. Ama will certainly regain komusubi rank after this basho.

UPDATE, Day 12: Fellow Mongolian Hakuho lifted Ama up and out of the ring, leaving him at 10-2, one loss behind Asashoryu (11-1), who won his bout against Tochiazuma.

UPDATE, Day 13: Ama had the chance to get back into a tie for the lead if he managed to defeat Asashoryu, but he had no such luck, so Ama stands at 10-3, while Asashoryu lengthens his lead to 12-1.

Topix.net has two sumo photos of interest from a Sadogatake-beya tour of Israel in June: Bulgarian ozeki Kotooshu in yukata and yarmulke at the Western Wall and stablemates Kotomitsuki and Kotoshogiku floating in the Dead Sea.

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by | 12 September 2006 · 6:22 pm

Percy/Daiki on Chad/Akebono

When I met Chad [Rowan = Akebono], he wasn’t that nice of a person, I guess ’cause all of the stress and stuff, but when I got to know him, he was one nice guy. Real humble. But mean personalities. I’ll tell you how he is. I been over there seven and a half years. The jungyo tournaments, comes in the morning. Doesn’t say one word. Sits down. Lies down. Rests a while. Gets up: “Mawashi!” Put on his belt, put on his yukata, walk straight to the dohyo. After he practice, he comes back, take a shower, then he start talking. “Oh, my back sore.” He neva like joking around. After that, then he jumps out of the shower, then he goes to eat. Different attitude. Quiet again, eating. Then he go back to his room. Joking around, talking story, listening to the radio, talking on the phone. Time for wrestle: pau. Attitude again. That’s why I used to watch his moods. I used to just practice with that. I know how he act already. I know what pisses him off. After practice, he go back to the shower; nobody bother him. Come back from the shower, eat, nobody bother him. After he pau eat, then you can talk story with him. You gotta catch him one perfect time. You don’t catch him one perfect time, he’s a bitch. Nobody can talk to him at all. —PERCY KIPAPA (DAIKI), 12/98

SOURCE: Gaijin Yokozuna: A Biography of Chad Rowan, by Mark Panek (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2006), p. 161

Percy Kipapa was found dead in a truck from multiple stab wounds on 16 May 2005 in Honolulu. —Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 19 May 2005

His friend, Kealiiokalani Meheula, was found guilty of second-degree murder in June 2006, and was sentenced to the mandatory life imprisonment with the possibility of parole on 6 September 2006. —Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 7 September 2006

“Percy Kipapa — he was my friend,” Meheula said yesterday, breaking down as he asked Kipapa’s family for forgiveness. “I loved him with my heart, and I have to live with this for the rest of my life.”

George Kipapa said he did not know how much love Percy, the youngest of the Kipapas’ three children, had shared with the people here and in Japan until his funeral.

“I’m not only proud that he had a career in sumo; most of all, I’m proud he learned the word love,” Kipapa said.

As for Meheula, Kipapa said he hoped God would have mercy on him and that in the future he would learn to let go of his anger and embrace others, not hurt them. “Today we gotta learn to love, not to hate,” Kipapa said.

The Honolulu Advertiser account on 7 September adds another pertinent detail.

Also speaking in court was Mark Panek, a friend of Percy Kipapa and author of a biography on sumo champion Chad Rowan. Panek said he met Percy Kipapa in Japan and said the other sumo wrestlers from Hawai’i miss him.

It looks as if Panek’s next biography has just been assigned to him. A biography with less triumph and more tragedy.

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by | 10 September 2006 · 12:40 pm

A Foreign Sumo Recruit’s Big Mistake

When the television crew left, Boss went upstairs to his third-floor apartment, leaving Chad in the big room with twelve other boys ranging in age from fifteen to twenty-one. They also ranged in size, from surprisingly scrawny younger kids to the imposing, four-hundred-pound Samoans from Hawai‘i, Taylor Wylie and John [Feleunga]. Chad looked from one to the next as they stared at him, sizing him up like a battle-seasoned army platoon eyeing an unlikely recruit. Each had his hair tied into a single knot that was folded over, looking like a samurai in the movies Chad had watched on TV. Purple welts and bruises covered most of their faces. Many of them had their arms folded so that the fabric of their robes stretched tight enough to display bulging biceps. Chad understood the energy he was sensing from them: testosterone. These guys fought for a living, day after day. They fought. As of yet, he did not.

Some of the younger Japanese boys began barking at him in words he could not understand, as if to order him around. Their guttural commands were more reminders of those samurai movies he and his brothers used to mimic in exaggerated grunts and mumbles. He turned to John and said, “Excuse me, John-san, what they wen’ say to me?”

“What I look like?” the Samoan glared at him. “Your fuckin’ interpreter?”

The blast of cold wind back at the airport had shocked him less. He stood motionless, trying to figure out the reaction somehow. It made no sense to him. While he might have expected trouble from the Japanese, John had been through exactly what he was now dealing with. He could have made things smoother for Chad with a few simple words: “they wen’ tell you for layout your futon,” or “they like know why you so tall.” Support from John did not have to last forever, Chad thought, but he had only been in the country a matter of hours. Instead it was, more or less, “just ’cause I local no mean I going help you—you’re on your own, Hawaiian.”

Confined now to silence, Chad continued to look around and take in the complex web of power surrounding him, one based on age, time served, and strength. In the last and most important of these, it was immediately clear that Taylor was The Man. Only eighteen as well, Taylor had come to Japan the year before and now ran the heya, as Chad could already tell, based on the obvious fact that he could kick anybody’s ass in the room. The big Samoan ordered two of the boys to set out a futon for Chad in the corner of the room, which they did immediately. They then showed Chad where he was to lay his futon out in the evenings and store it in the mornings, and finally, a personal storage area much too large for his small bag.

All of the boys, as it happened, shared the big room. As far as he could tell, they spoke more or less freely with each other, laughing occasionally from one corner to the other as much as the boundaries he had noticed permitted. But beyond Taylor’s initial gesture, no one made any effort to include him, including the other boys from Hawai‘i, who bantered fluently in Japanese. Chad realized as he lay on the cold, hard floor that his time in the spotlight was over. This was not the sumo he had seen on television. Konishiki’s limo, stardom, big money—it all may as well have been another ten-day-long flight away from this hard, cold floor. They’ll take care of everything. Right. All he could think about as he drifted off to sleep was home, and what a huge mistake he had just made by leaving.

SOURCE: Gaijin Yokozuna: A Biography of Chad Rowan, by Mark Panek (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2006), pp. 16-17

The 2006 Aki Basho (Fall Tournament) is now underway, with one gaijin yokozuna at the top of the banzuke, two gaijin ozeki, one gaijin komusubi, and seven gaijin maegashira: from Mongolia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Estonia, and Russia. But not a single Polynesian, I’m sad to say. I’m rooting for the Okinawan rookie Ryuho (Ryukyu Roc/Phoenix), who just made his major league (makuuchi) debut.

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