Mr. Inoki turned to politics in 1989, when he was elected to Parliament’s upper house as an independent candidate, but he continued to wrestle until 1998. He is instantly recognizable in Japan by his jutting chin, red scarf and red necktie.

His pursuit of independent diplomacy started early. In 1990, he met with the Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Cuba; photos of the two shaking hands, drinking sake and embracing are dotted around Mr. Inoki’s parliamentary offices.

Later that year, he visited Iraq, and is credited with helping negotiate the release of 41 Japanese citizens who had been taken hostage by Saddam Hussein’s government in the months before the first Persian Gulf War of 1991.

In 1994, Mr. Inoki was invited to Pyongyang by Kim Il-sung, the North’s founding leader. Mr. Kim was said to be a fan of professional wrestling. But the trip did not happen: On his way to Pyongyang, Mr. Inoki landed in Beijing for a layover to the news that Mr. Kim had died.

He was invited back the next year to participate in the wrestling match — part of what was called a Sports and Peace Festival — which Mr. Inoki said more than 380,000 spectators came to watch. Since then, he has returned every year for the anniversary of the founding of the country’s government, the occasion of his visit this month, as well as for other trips.

This time, Mr. Inoki said, he met with three high-ranking officials at a reception, where he drank ginseng wine and ate pine mushrooms that are scarce in Japan but plentiful in North Korea. His escorts took him to the zoo, he said, and to the top of a new, 70-story building that he had seen under construction when he visited last year.

Mr. Inoki said that for the first time, officials from the Foreign Ministry had sought his advice after his return from North Korea. Taro Fujii, a spokesman in the ministry’s Northeast Asian Division, said ministry officials did speak with Mr. Inoki but declined to say what they discussed.