Sumo ‘Not Just a Sport,’ Champ Says : Wrestling: He meets press, displays wit. Clinton sends congratulations.

Sumo king Akebono cried like a baby every night for his first six months in Japan because he was so homesick for his native Hawaii and persevered only for his parents’ sake. He’s as big as he wants to get at 462 pounds and doesn’t plan to gain any more weight.

He’s gotten hate mail for being American but never felt discriminated against by his sumo colleagues. He doesn’t think the “Star-Spangled Banner” would sound right at a sumo tournament, nor does he think sumo would succeed as an Olympic sport outside Japan because “sumo is not just a sport, it’s a life.”

And since making sumo history last month by becoming the first foreign yokozuna , or grand champion, in the sport’s 2,000-year history, Akebono--otherwise known as Chad Rowan, 23--now feels more Japanese than American and expects to live here for the rest of his life.

In his first press appearance before foreign correspondents in Tokyo on Tuesday, the sumo champion showed wit, grace and incredible patience as he fielded dozens of questions from the silly to sensitive: about his weight and drinking habits, his love life and national identity, his wrestling techniques and Hawaiian colleagues.

Dressed in a light-brown kimono, his hair twisted in the sumo wrestler’s distinctive topknot, Akebono seemed more relaxed and humorous conversing in his native English than he typically projects in what often are poker-faced, monosyllabic Japanese interviews.

Akebono also adroitly sidestepped more sensitive questions: why he succeeded over fellow Hawaiian wrestler Konishiki (luck); whether he has witnessed sumo’s rumored ties with gangsters (no), and whether he supports quotas on foreigners in sumo, which some Japanese are urging.

“My job is not to think,” he answered. “I just wrestle.”

Later Tuesday, at a reception for him sponsored by U.S. Ambassador Michael H. Armacost, Akebono received a congratulatory message from President Clinton and good-naturedly posed for countless pictures with star-struck fans.

At his news conference, he described his arduous path to sumo’s pinnacle, starting five years ago when he decided to chuck a basketball college scholarship in Hawaii for a shot at sumo in Japan.

He candidly said he was getting mostly Ds at school and still passing--which made him realize he was in school only for basketball, hardly a promising future. So he turned to sumo when a friend introduced him to his present stable master, Azumazeki, the former Jesse Kuhualua.

But landing in Japan at age 18, knowing not a word of Japanese, much less the harsh, hierarchical world he was entering, gave him a horrendous case of culture shock.

To be beaten on every day in the sumo ring, to be ordered to scrub the toilets and cook the rice by 15-year-old wrestlers half his size with nothing but seniority over him, sorely tested him and made him want to quit and go home, he said.

“I thought I was a man when I came here, but I found out I was still a baby,” Akebono said. “But I thought, ‘If I come back, people will laugh at my mom and dad.’ ”

So he stayed, his ambitions driven by his hunger to escape an impoverished life in Hawaii and by lessons his parents taught him from youth: “No matter how much you get kicked down, just swallow your pride and keep going and at the end, you should come out on top.”

To succeed in sumo, he said he had to be “born again,” giving up all he had learned as a Hawaiian-American and recasting himself as a wrestler in Japan--speaking Japanese, living communally, doing grunt work. He awoke each morning, intent just to learn one new Japanese word, one new sumo tip.

Azumazeki taught him that the fastest way to rise in sumo was to push his opponent out of the ring, leading him to develop his trademark thrust. And despite criticism that he relies too much on that single style without developing a fuller range of sumo holds, Akebono joked Tuesday, “If I change my style, I think I have to retire early.”

He also drew laughs when he described his reaction to the occasional hate mail telling him to go back to America: “You look at it and say, ‘These people have too much free time.’ ”

Akebono added that Hawaiians probably get breaks not extended to Japanese wrestlers. Their breaches of etiquette, for instance, are more easily forgiven because they don’t fully understand the language or culture.

The champion said he has no regrets about joining sumo. After all, if he hadn’t, “I think I’d be a bum on the beach in Hawaii someplace.”