Danylo Yavhusishyn arrived in Japan in April 2022 as a teenage refugee from the war in Ukraine, unable to speak a word of the language and uncertain how long he would be separated from his family.

This weekend, the 20-year-old will make his debut in the top division of the ancient sport of sumo wrestling, after rising through the ranks with record speed.

“I’m more excited than nervous,” he told reporters and fans in a public appearance ahead of a major tournament in Osaka. Brimming with confidence, he added: “I’m looking forward to competing against tough opponents. I want to win more than 10 bouts and win one of the three awards [for exceptional performances].”

Now known by his Japanese ring name Aonishiki Arata, the Ukrainian wrestler recently won promotion to sumo’s highest level when he ended the New Year’s tournament in Tokyo with 12 wins and just three losses.

It took him just nine tournaments to reach the top tier of Japan’s de facto national sport – an accomplishment that ties him with two other wrestlers for the fastest ascent through all six divisions since 1958, when sumo adopted its current format of six grand tournaments, or basho, a year.

On Sunday, he will start 15 days of bouts at the Osaka basho as the No. 15 maegashira, the most junior rank in the elite makuuchi division, but from where some sumo watchers believe he will mount a campaign to become the first European yokozuna grand champion.

Flight from Ukraine

Aonishiki, who is 182cm in height and weighs a relatively modest 136kg, discovered sumo as a boy, practising judo and freestyle wrestling before encountering sumo athletes visiting his gym in Ukraine from Japan. Grappling, Japanese style, quickly became his athletic calling.

In 2019, he finished third at the junior world sumo championships in Osaka, in a tournament that would one day give him a means of escaping the Ukraine conflict and shape his future as a professional wrestler.

There he met the Japanese wrestler Arata Yamanaka, then captain of the sumo team at Kansai university, and the two stayed in touch via social media.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Aonishiki, who had recently fled to Germany with his parents, reached out to Yamanaka, whose family agreed to host the Ukrainian teenager. He was given permission to train at the university despite not being enrolled as a student.

“I had only met [Yamanaka] once in person and he welcomed me, even though I couldn’t speak a word of Japanese,” Aonishiki told the Kyodo news agency last year. “I was surprised when he said OK. If it had been the other way around, I would have refused.”

Aonishiki, who took the first name Arata as a tribute to his Japanese friend and mentor, added: “Thanks to him, I was able to come to Japan and meet so many people. If I hadn’t met him, I wouldn’t be who I am today.”

Eight months after he arrived in Japan, Aonishiki joined the Ajigawa stable in eastern Tokyo to train under former wrestler Aminishiki.

Despite experiencing culture shock and anxiety over the fate of his home country, “Danya” – as his friends nicknamed him – was a dominant force in the university sumo ring, according to contemporaries, defeating heavier opponents using his physical strength and faultless technique.

“I have never beaten Danya formally in any of my 200 bouts against him,” Akihiro Sakamoto, 21, a former captain of the Kansai University sumo team, told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

Aonishiki has risen through the ranks since his professional debut in September 2023, accumulating winning records in successive tournament, as his hair grew long enough to be tied into a top knot, while the addition of extra kilos has made him an even tougher proposition.

“Danya will end up becoming a yokozuna,” Sakamoto told the Asahi. “He’s formidable.”

As he prepared for a tournament late last year, with yet another promotion in sight, Aonishiki, who is now fluent in the language of his adopted home, said he was fighting for the “Japanese family” who had helped him since he fled Ukraine.

‘All I’ve done is follow instructions’

His feats have not gone unnoticed in Ukraine, which had already produced another top-flight wrestler, Shishi. Writing in the Ukrainian Weekly, the sports journalist Ihor Stelmach said Aonishiki, a native of the city of Vinnytsia, had “capitalised on his opportunity to the point of being mentioned as a potential future European sumo wrestler at the top of Japan’s national sport”.

More than 2,700 Ukrainians sought refuge in Japan after the Russian invasion as part of a scheme launched by the Japanese government that entitles them to working visas and long-term residency. Almost 2,000 remain.

In a survey last year by the Nippon Foundation, which has provided living and other expenses to Ukrainian refugees, 39% said they wanted to stay in Japan “for as long as possible”, while 34% said they wanted to return home once the situation there had stabilised.

Showing the kind of humility expected of sumo wrestlers, Aonishiki attempted to play down his achievement after fighting his way into the sport’s elite, telling reporters: “All I’ve done is follow my stablemaster’s instructions.”