Sitting on the edge of a homemade sumo ring carved out of a grassy section of his North Shore backyard, John Jacques says, "right in this area, from 20 miles south to 10 miles north, is the real hotbed of sumo (in the U.S.)."

It is a telling scene in the film "Sumo East and West" with Jacques, who has devoted most of his 50 years to the sport with the O'ahu Sumo Association, and disciple and ex-pro Wayne Vierra talking about keeping alive the flame of a sport that has existed here for more than a century.

"Sumo East and West" — which airs tomorrow at 9 p.m. in Hawai'i Public Television's Independent Lens series — tells in rich anecdotal detail and behind-the-scenes glimpses the remarkable story of the adaptation and ascent of a group of Hawai'i-bred sumotori in an alien sport and land. It recounts, from their first awkward steps in Japan, their journeys from raw recruits into skilled and celebrated practitioners of the centuries-old sport of emperors.

The film's airing is well-timed coming at the first juncture in 40 years when the sport is without an active professional sumotori from Hawai'i.

An unbroken lineage begun by Jesse Kuhaulua in 1964 sadly meets its ceremonial end Oct. 2 in Tokyo when Fiamalu Penitani, who reached the sport's pinnacle as yokozuna Musashimaru, has his top knot ritually snipped off atop the ring.

Musashimaru, though, competed in his last match in November and, thanks to hurdles thrown up by the ruling Japan Sumo Association (JSA), there is no one from here currently in the sport or on the horizon to take his place.

The success of Konishiki, Akebono, Musashimaru and Yamato, a string of powerful, locally bred leviathan performers in the late 1980s and early 1990s prompted the JSA to take a series of panicked if not xenophobic measures that put an end to Hawai'i's celebrated contributions. Not by coincidence, the sport's popularity has slumped badly in the interim.

In the film, we come to see how overseers of the sport in Japan have been conflicted by the foreign phenomenon. That while amateur sumo now reaches out for Olympic inclusion modifying its rules, the JSA has turned its back on Hawai'i by erecting barricades.

The JSA, after first declaring a moratorium on foreign recruits, subsequently came up with what Honolulu attorney Kats Miho calls, "ambiguous standards" to deter them.

Meanwhile, on the homemade rings of the North Shore, where Vierra says, "once you love sumo you can never escape..." the true believers are undeterred.