Biographers of living celebrities must make a fundamental choice: write from the inside or the outside. At one extreme are the insiders -- friends, relations or paid hacks -- who may see and hear much outsiders don't, but end up writing book-length fan letters. At the other extreme are the writers, usually hacks of another sort, who recycle gossip and scandal, with a eye on the sales charts.
Then there is the third way, which Mark Panek attempts in "Gaijin Yokozuna: A Biography of Chad Rowan." A sumo fan since 1992, a biographer of his subject, former yokozuna Akebono, since 1998, 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 Hawaii and in Japan, while deeply researching sumo as a way of life, as well as a professional sport and cultural touchstone. The result is a solid, insightful, sympathetic portrait of Akebono and sumo.
But Panek also agonized over how to present his material, putting the book through several rewrites. The University of Hawaii Press finally published it this year -- not long perhaps in the geologic time frame of university presses, but an eon in the here-today-gone-tomorrow world of celebrity journalism. Akebono, meanwhile, retired in 2001 and left the sumo world in 2003 for a mostly losing career as a K-1 fighter. Now a pro wrestler with an uncertain future, he has fallen from a respected (if not always loved) national figure to a variety-show punch line.