For 20 years Jesse Kuhaulua of Maui was a record-setting ironman in the punishing world of sumo.

For another two decades he has been a trailblazer in its coaching ranks.

But as he visits home in Hawai'i this week, Kuhaulua said he is reminded how soon his active role in the sport he has put his imprint upon will be coming to an end.

In Honolulu to help promote the June 9 to 10 Hawai'i Basho at Blasidell Arena, Kuhaulua said he has come to understand how much he will be turning full circle soon. Sumo Association rules require elders, a salaried position Kuhaulua has occupied since his retirement from the ring, to step down on their 65th birthday. For Kuhaulua, "that means three years and eight months," he said.

As such, the Hawai'i Basho is likely to be his last public appearance as a sumo official in the land of his birth. A realization that he said makes him shake his head at, "how time flies."

For it was going on 43 years now that he left Hawai'i as a raw 19-year-old recruit with a bare-bones amateur sumo background to try and survive in Japan's national sport.

"I was hoping to last, maybe, five or 10 years," Kuhaulua said. But in a little over eight he had become the first foreigner to win the Emperor's Cup, emblematic of a championship in the sport of emperors. He lasted as a competitor until nearly his 40th birthday, an almost unheard of standard. Such was his popularity that he became a well-paid commercial pitchman in advertising, allowing him to save enough money to open his own stable after retirement from competition in 1984.

Kuhaulua said he will soon have to decide who gets the title of the 15th Azumazeki over three centuries, the name he took on as a sumo elder and stable owner, when he sells his stable.

Two of his ranking understudies, Takamisakari and Ushiomaru, are candidates should they retire in the next couple of years.

Kuhaulua said he has also fielded offers from others outside the stable. At one time he had hoped that his most famous protege, Chad Rowan of Waimanalo, who competed as Akebono, would succeed him.

"I had plans for Chad," Kuhaulua said.

But when Rowan left sumo and went into mixed martial arts after retirement, that was no longer possible since elders must be standing sumo association members.

Kuhaulua said he hopes to split his retirement between Hawai'i and Japan.

Since leaving for sumo in 1964, Kuhaulua said the most he's been able to come home for "is two or three weeks at a time. I'd like to spend about six months here. I miss the weather."

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com.