Hawaiian Wrestles Way to the Top in Ancient Arena : Japan: An American grapples with hazing and xenophobia to become the second foreigner to win a professional sumo tournament and the first to vie for a top award.

TOKYO —  Not too long ago, Salevaa Fuauli Atisanoe, a 490-pound Samoan-American from Honolulu, seriously considered quitting his dream of making it big, really big, in Japan.

Atisanoe--who once summed up his size by saying, “I’ve been big ever since I was small”--would be a giant in any country. He found his niche on these cramped islands seven years ago in the sumo arena, where mammoth men combine ferocity with agility in an ancient and ritual-laden sport.

But Atisanoe, 25, known here by his sumo name Konishiki, had to endure brutal hazing by his “stable” mates and shrug off occasional hate mail from xenophobic fans. After rising quickly through the ranks, he suffered a knee injury and entered a slump, losing so many bouts he was in danger of being demoted from his cherished status as ozeki, or champion.

But recently, Konishiki overcame years of frustration by winning his first professional sumo tournament. He is the second foreigner ever to do so.

The giant wept.

“I tried very hard, very hard, not to cry, but I couldn’t help it,” Konishiki said after his victory Nov. 26 in the southern city of Fukuoka. Before the tournament, “I actually thought of retiring. But I made up my mind to make one more try.”

Konishiki’s triumph came 17 years after Jesse Kuhaulua--another Hawaiian native who wrestled as Takamiyama--stunned the sumo world by winning one of the six annual grand tournaments.

President Bush sent a message of congratulations to Konishiki, which a U.S. Embassy official read--in passable Japanese--during a nationally televised awards ceremony. Sponsors also showered the American athlete with various prizes, including one ton of rice, four tons of beans and about 5,000 eels, a delicacy here.

“You join another great son of America, Takamiyama, in becoming only the second foreign sumo wrestler to have achieved this pinnacle of success--the Sumo Championship. Please keep up your good work,” Bush said in a telegram. “We are all proud of you.”

Indeed, Konishiki’s claim to the Emperor’s Cup, after winning 14 bouts against one loss, not only marked a dramatic comeback in his career, but it also symbolized the brighter side of U.S.-Japan relations at a time of worsening economic friction.

An emotional backlash to aggressive Japanese investment in the United States, such as Sony’s $4.3-billion acquisition of Columbia Pictures, has recently aroused charges that Japan is trying to “buy the soul of America.” And U.S. officials fault Japan for maintaining closed markets that deny access to foreigners.

That can no longer be said of sumo, arguably the “soul of Japan.”

Takamiyama, who retired in 1984 after 20 years in the ring, was the first non-Japanese to break into the game. But a sour note greeted his win at the Nagoya tournament in 1972, as Japanese fans and sportswriters struggled with the seemingly incongruous notion of an alien out-wrestling their own champions.

When former President Richard M. Nixon sent a congratulatory message to Takamiyama, the text was read in English, an awkward anomaly that violated the inner sanctum of sumo for some purists.

Takamiyama, who later took Japanese citizenship to qualify as a sumo stable master, was never promoted above third-ranked sekiwake.

Yet sumo has since internationalized, to a degree. A dozen or so foreign wrestlers have attempted to discipline themselves within its rigid traditions in recent years--undergoing arduous training, submitting to communal living and gorging themselves on traditional chankonabe stews of fish and vegetables. Most have not lasted very long.

Konishiki has endured. Already he has risen higher than Takamiyama or any other foreigner in the elaborate hierarchy of sumo, winning enough matches to attain the second-highest rank of ozeki in 1987. At that time he boldly declared his ambition to fight all the way to the supreme yokozuna (grand champion) rank.

It was Takamiyama who recruited Konishiki, a Hawaiian high school football star who planned to study music in college, and brought him to Japan to apprentice at a sumo stable in 1982. Konishiki, a natural athlete who is relatively nimble for his enormous girth, qualified for the professional grade of sekitori after only 2 1/2 years of training.

In an article he wrote last year for the Japanese magazine Bungei Shunju, Konishiki recalled the bullying and hardships of his rite of passage into the Japanese wrestling cult. An intoxicated senior slapped him awake one night, demanding to know why Konishiki had gone to bed before him. Another cruel stable mate threw away a bundle of personal letters he had been saving.

“When higher-ranking wrestlers make it tough on the people beneath them, it’s usually because they see they have promise and want to put them to the test,” Konishiki wrote.

“Anyone who can’t take the hazing probably doesn’t have what it takes to succeed in sumo,” he said. “That’s the reason they’ve done it this way for hundreds of years. . . . I’m a believer in tradition.”

Konishiki’s first star showing, his 12-3 record in a 1985 tournament, for which he was awarded the Outstanding Performance Prize, aroused some of the sumo xenophobia that marred Takamiyama’s earlier gains.

The 6-foot-1 American said he received poison-pen letters. Later, when he was routinely defeating higher-ranked wrestlers, Konishiki got death threats by phone.

Bigoted sumo fans mounted “stop Konishiki” campaigns, and during one tournament someone nailed a doll bearing his likeness to a tree at a Shinto shrine in Kamakura. (Sumo had its origins in the ritual of Shinto, Japan’s indigenous religion.)

“I entered sumo under the same conditions as a Japanese and received the same kind of treatment while I was training,” Konishiki recalled in his magazine article.

“But I keep hearing people say they don’t want a foreigner to win, that I shouldn’t be promoted to the top rank of yokozuna since I only win by brute strength,” he wrote. “I feel like saying to them, ‘Listen, if you don’t want me to win or become a grand champion, why did you let me into sumo in the first place?’ ”

Konishiki, whose weight has hovered around 500 pounds since he began competing, is easily the heaviest of the 36 wrestlers competing in the top makunouchi division. He outweighs Chiyonofuji, 34--the comparatively diminutive yokozuna who reigns over sumo with his quick moves and wily technique--by more than 200 pounds.

Konishiki rammed Chiyonofuji, “the wolf,” out of the ring Nov. 24, breaking the latter’s eight-tournament winning streak. The crowd in Fukuoka, for the record, cheered for Konishiki as he racked up his wins.

“Sumo is power, that’s all. It’s two men pushing and flailing at each other in a ring,” said Ryosei Oki, 58, a Tokyo taxi driver who listened tensely to a radio broadcast of Konishiki’s tournament-clinching bout as he drove last Sunday evening.

“Nobody cares that Konishiki is a foreigner,” said Oki, whose devotion to sumo is eclipsed only by his love for besuboru (baseball). “He’s got power. It wouldn’t matter if he had a face like a devil, so long as he’s strong.”