36. A great sumo wrestler

Today, I write about “A great sumo wrestler.”
His name is “Taiho.”
He was born on the island of Sakhalin ( Karafuto Prefecture ) to a Japanese mother Kiyo Naya and an ethnic Ukrainian father Markiyan Boryshko who had fled the Bolshevik Revolution .
1945, Soviet Union took control of Sakhalin.
He and his mother moves to Hokkaido.
At that time, His mother gets down from a ship on the way by seasickness.
A ship is attacked after that and sinks.
They escaped death by a hair’s breadth.

The life of them in Hokkaido was poor.
He entered sumo in September 1956.
May 1959 he was given the shikona (wrestler name) of “Taihō”, meaning “Great peng ” (“peng” is often translated to “phoenix”).
He was very strong and spared no effort.

1961, He became a yokozuna (the highest rank in sumo wrestling), less than two years after his top division debut.
At the time,He was the youngest wrestler ever to have achieved sumo’s highest rank of yokozuna aged 21 years.
He have achieved six tournament victories consecutively and 32 tournament victories.
He was a hero in Japan.
1971, he announced his retirement.

1977, at the age of 36, he suffered a stroke.
After, he used a wheelchair in the last stage of his life.

Quite recently,
He died of heart failure in a Tokyo hospital on January 19, 2013 at the age of 72.
Many people mourned the hero’s death.

He is a great sumo wrestler.