Gaijin Yokozuna: A Biography of Chad Rowan (A Latitude 20 Book)
"Panek got as close to Akebono as anyone from the outside could without actually joining his stable, family, or entourage.  He also interviewed many people around Akebono, both in his native Hawai'i and in Japan, while deeply researching sumo as a way of life, as well as a professional sport and cultural touchstone....'Gaijin Yokozuna' is the best sumo biography in English, and few books in English or Japanese can match it in bringing sumo--and one sumotori--to vivid, compulsively readable life."---TheJapanTimes."Panek has created a hybrid that is part sociological study, part memoir, and part examination of the sumo world. Panek, a sympathetic critic of this last subject, writes extremely well of Akebono's struggles to adapt his completely unsuitable body to the ring....But what takes Gaijin Yokozuna above the standard sports biography is Panek's argument that Akebono's success was not only in winning bouts, but also in acting assimilated when he had to."--TheDailyYomiuri"Panek presents an intriguing study of Rowan as a outsider whose deft cultural performances evoked the Japanese identity so central to sumo's ages-old identity....The human subject of 'Gaijin Yokozuna' is never in doubt, yet Panek added a different level of meaning by interweaving his own experiences as a gaijin in Japan and a biographer grappling with practical, theoretical and ethical challenges....To Randy Rowan, the sumotori's brother, Panek found just the right touch....'It was like Mark wen' sit down with bradda and just talk story.'"--TheHonoluluAdvertiser"Panek tells this story masterfully, tracing and retracing his research footsteps, through oral histories with everyone from Akebono's imprisoned brother (the one whom stable owner Jesse Kuhaulua really wanted to draft) to his drinking buddies in Japan, through grueling weeks on jungyo (exhibition tours), through tournaments and press conferences, through official appearances for wealthy patrons and very unofficial parties with the champion's 'ukulele-strumming homies, through stories that have become legend."---TheHonoluluAdvertiser