When Japan played host to the 1998 Winter Olympics and sought to put a symbolic face on the opening ceremonies for the world to see, it eventually chose ... a former basketball player from Waimanalo?

Not for the first time did Chad Rowan, a Kaiser High athlete turned sumo trailblazer, find himself in a huge — or unlikely — role in Japan.

Five years earlier, at a towering 6 feet 8 and 500 pounds, he stood atop the sport of emperors when he gained sumo's highest rank of yokozuna, the first foreign-born practitioner to accomplish the feat.

He remained there for seven years, winning 11 tournaments, before chronic knee and back problems finally forced him from the ring in 2001. Of the dozens of hopefuls from Hawai'i who journeyed to Japan between the 1960s and 1990 to seek their fortunes, Rowan set the bar.

Yet he would be the first to tell you the whole remarkable turn of events was as surprising to him as anyone else. "Sometimes I just sit back and think, 'Wow! How did this all happen to me?'" said the man who gained unimagined fame under the ring name of Akebono.

It was a prophetic name, meaning the dawn, for someone who helped usher in a new day in the centuries-old sport.

Since his ascension three more foreigners have reached sumo's highest rank, including Fiamalu Penitani of Wai'anae, who competed as Musashimaru.

Rowan found his way to sumo through the most unlikely of circumstances, a relative's funeral. Larry Aweau, a relative who was also a cousin of sumo stable owner Jesse Kuhaulua, saw both Rowan and his brother, George, at a funeral.

Aweau, who did some scouting for Kuhaulua, liked their size and and asked about the interest. George, who was still in high school, was too young and Chad, who had just graduated, was planning to attend college and play basketball. But after a brief stay at Hawai'i Pacific University, Rowan and Aweau talked again.

If sumo had never laid eyes on anyone like him, well, the man that would become revered under the ring name of Akebono initially had little clue about the sport, either. "When I used to see it on TV, it looked easy; just run into somebody and try to push them out," Akebono recalled.

In a sport where a low center of gravity and well-developed lower body are pluses, Akebono was a giraffe in a field of rhinos. Because of the size question, Kuhaulua said he was initially skeptical about Akebono's possibilities.

The doubts grew with Akebono's first awkward weeks when, Kuhaulua remembers, "he was getting pushed around by younger, smaller guys. I remember the first time he put on a belt and wrestled. He didn't look very good. To tell you the truth, for a while, I was afraid I made a big mistake bringing him into sumo. I asked myself, 'Why did you take a chance on this guy?' "

In time, however, as Akebono matured and hungered for success his punishing hours in the practice ring and persistence paid off.

"It (sumo) made me grow up and work hard to be something," Akebono said. "Sumo brought it out. It gives you determination. In sumo, the only thing you can do is get strong and win. If you don't get strong, you do the dishes and wash the clothes."

Kuhaulua said, "What the Japanese people liked about Akebono was that he worked very hard."

While Akebono was rising above his struggles, the eye of sumo was on two much-heralded brothers who joined the sport in the same March of 1988 class, Takanohana and Wakanohana. They were the sons of one of the sport's most popular performers of the period, Takanohana, and the nephews of a yokozuna, Wakanohana.

"Their pictures were always in the newspapers and magazines," Akebono said. "Everywhere they went there were cameras."

They provided inspiration and a competitive push for Akebono, who said, "I used to hang their pictures up where I slept and just stare at them every day."

When Akebono began to do well against them in practices and matches, "their father told me afterward, 'He (Akebono) is going to be a good one,' " Kuhaulua recalls.

Their quick rise coincided with that of Akebono giving the sport a rivalry and drama that filled arenas with 666 consecutive tournament nights between November 1989 and May 1997.

In just 26 tournaments Akebono reached ozeki rank, the fastest such climb in history to that point, with the brothers right behind him.

When Akebono defeated Takanohana for the title of the 1993 New Year's Tournament in a bout seen by 62 percent of the television households in Japan, he could not be denied promotion the way Nanakuli's Saleva'a Atisanoe had less than a year before.

"I never really thought of myself as a star," Akebono likes to say. "I've just been fortunate. Somebody up above in the clouds was with me."

Upon his retirement in 2001, Akebono stayed in the ruling Japan Sumo Association for a time before turning to a disappointing K-1 fighting career and then moving on to pro wrestling. He lives in Japan with his wife and three children.