Gaijin

[smacks]

I hope Hisa can help me with this question but everyone else should feel free to chime in on this:

Why exactly is the perception of gaijin different then that of native wrestlers. They seem to be in almost a separate category, I mean New Japan has a separate G1 for gaijin wrestlers.
This being said why is Taiyo Kea treated like a native wrestler, isn't he from Hawaii making him a gaijin?

[Hisaharu Tanabe]

Several reasons:
- As you can learn from the history section of my web site, puroresu started with a feud between Japanese and gaijins (Americans, particularly).

- They way they make contract may be different from natives. I'm not sure, though. Natives are usually full-time employees of the promotion whereas gaijins are usually treated as guests. Besides, those gaijins don't usually live in Japan.

- Most of the gaijins were not trained at the dojo. Taiyo Kea started from All Japan dojo, so that makes him an "All Japan native". Similarly, in his early days, Chris Benoit, who was trained at New Japan dojo, was one of those "young lions" surrounding the ring as seconds/security. I think you can say that he was treated the same as the natives.

- More importantly, Japan was in a state of isolation between 1600s and 1800s. That's why we tend to look at gaijins differently. Believe me, no country has a diversity like the US does.