See that the most famous wrestlers of Japan have offered their services to the emperor in the war with China. They have sent a delegation to him at Hiroshima, asking that they be sent to Corea and be given a place in the Japanese army. These men have done a great deal in the crude wars of the past, but it is doubtful whether they will be of much use in connection with Gatting guns and Winchester rifles. They form a a curious class of the Japanese people, and they are like no other athletes on the face of the globe. They have entirely different methods of training from our prize fighters and John Sullivan or Corbett would laugh at their corpulent frames. They would think them puffy and flabby, and would expect to see them go all to pieces at a blow. Still, I venture the Japanese giants could stand several rounds with either Sullivan or Corbett, and they could probably throw either of these muscular Americans in a wrestling bout. They seem to be of a race of their own. They are taller and heavier than the ordinary Japanese, and many of them are over six feet in height. The Japanese man is is no taller than the average American girl. He has a long body and short legs. He is as straight as a stick but he is stocky rather than tall. These wrestlers weigh from two to three hundred pounds, and they are mountains of fat and beef. They eat quantities of meat while the other people of Japan live largely upon vegetables rice and fish.
    They drink soup and beer by the gallon, and Professor Burton of the Imperial University, who has taken the best photographs of them, told me how two wrestlers whom he was entertaining one day in order to get their pictures each drank two dozen bottles of beer and great quantities of soda water, ginger ale and claret These wrestlers have features much the same as the ordinary Japanese, though their heads are much larger, and more like cannon balls than anything else. They wrestle almost stark naked, and the only hair I could see on their bodies was under their armpits, and that which was put up in the old Japanese style on the tops of their heads. They shave their heads from the forehead to the crown, leaving that over the ears and at the back to grow long, and tying it up on the top of the head in a queue like a door-knocker. They are by no means fierce looking, and when I visited the wrestling matches I was taken among them and chatted with some of them through through my interpreter. I felt their muscles, and they were as hard as iron, and what I had supposed to be great lumps of fat I found to be bundles of muscle.

    These wrestlers date back almost to the beginning of Japanese history. The Daimios kept a corps of them about their persons, and when the princes traveled over the country they always had some of these men with them. They gave exhibitions at funeral and wedding processions and they are mentioned in Japanese history as far back as twenty four years before Christ.  About five hundred years before Columbus and his band of Spanish pirates discovered America the throne of Japan was the prize of a wrestling match. The emperor had two sons. Whether they were twins or not I don't know but they both aspired to the throne. Their father told them to each pick out a champion wrestler and the one who backed the victor should be emperor. The boys agreed to this, and the successful backer succeeded his father. From that time to this wrestling has gone on all over Japan, and Japanese history is filled with the exploits of wrestlers. There are regular matches held every year in the big cities and those in Tokio and Osaka last for weeks, and the champions of the eastern and western parts of the empire are pitted against each other. Not long ago wrestling became a great fad, and one of the cabinet ministers, I am told, entered the ring, while the noblest men of the empire were ready to meet all comers. In 1888 Count Kuroda, the prime minister, gave wrestling a great boom, and during the past year some of the most famous matches ever held in Japan have taken place.

    I saw famous matches in both Tokio and Osaka, and I spear one day at a wrestling match in Japanese capital, in which one hundred and twenty of the greatest wrestlers of Japan struggled together. The wrestling began at 10 in the morning and lasted until 5 in the afternoon, and there was not a minute during this time that wrestlers were not in the ring. But let me give you some idea of one of these Japanese prize fights. Imagine the biggest circus tent you have ever seen to be spread out upon a net-work of bamboo poles so that it covers about ten thousand people. These sit on the ground and in boxes or on platforms which are built up perhaps ten feet above the ground, and in the center of the crowd there is a little pavilion about twenty feet square, supported by four posts as large around as telegraph poles.
    This pavilion is trimmed with red, and its posts are wrapped with red cloth, while about its top there is a curtain of blue. It has a raised foundation perhaps two feet high and a ring of rice bags run around its floor, inclosing a circle twelve feet in diameter, which is floored with black earth. This is the famed wrestling ring in Japan, and in such rings all these matches are fought. The giants struggle inside the rice bags, and if one can throw the other over these or can fling him to the earth he is proclaimed the victor. At each corner of this pavilion against one of the red posts, sits a sober, dark-faced, heavy-browed Japanese, dressed in a black kimono. He is raised upon cushions, and sits cross-legged, and he forms one of the four judges in case there is a dispute as to the decision of the umpire. In the center of the ring stands the umpire, wearing the old brocade costume of the days of the Daimios. He has a black lacquer fan in his hand and he looks like a chump. He screeches out his voice as though he had the colic and was screaming with pain, but his shrill cries penetrate to every part of the circus, and he is a man of great importance and long training. The  spectators squat on the ground back of the ring, and on these platforms. Each has a little tobacco box before him, with some coals of fire in it. All sit cross-legged, and nearly all smoke little metal pipes with bowls as big as a thimble.

    But let us take a look at the wrestlers. There are scores of them squatting about the ring, just outside of the rice bags. They are entirely naked, with the exception of a band of blue silk four inches wide, which runs around their waists and between their legs and is tied in a knot at the back. This has a fringe about four inches long, which falls to their thighs, but further than this they have no more clothes than had Adam when he was gardening before he had eaten the apple. Here come two into the ring. They are the most famous wrestlers of the east and west, and the people receive them with clapping. What giants they are, and how queerly they act! At the corners there are buckets of water. They walk up to these and gulp down great swallows. They fill their mouths and squirt the fluid into the air so that it falls back in a spray over their cream-colored bodies. They take bits of paper and wipe themselves off, and then they look about on the audience and show off their muscles, while a yell goes up from five thousand throats. They pound their naked chests with their fists. They slap their brawny thighs. They lift their legs up as high as their shoulders, and they stamp their feet down on the well-packed earth so that the pavilion trembles as though a cyclone was passing through it. Look at that man's arm. It is as big around as Grover Cleveland's thigh and the belt of the champion would loosely fit the waist of Wilson Shannon Bissell. He looks more like a man with the dropsy than a great athlete, and his body seems to be padded with great bunches of fat. He has a front like a saloon keeper and his face shines like a butcher's. He is the champion of the east and the man from the west is almost as large. Now the two giants walk to opposite sides of the ring. They bow to the umpire and judges, and then squat down on their heels and look at each other. They come to the center of the ring. They bend over and rest their fists on the floor. They poke their great heads to the front, and their big almond eyes almost burst from their buttonhole sockets. How they glare at each other.
    They are watching for the signal to close. Now they rest for a moment, picking up the dirt from the ring and rubbing it under their armpits and over their bodies. Then they kneel and glare again. The umpire watches them closely. He waits until they breathe together, and then gives the signal. As he does so, they crouch like tigers and spring into each others arms. Each tries to grab the belt of the other. They wrap their arms round one another, and you almost hear their ribs crack. The bunches of fat become mountains of muscle, and both arms and legs look like iron. Their biceps stand out. Their calves quiver. Their paunches shrink in. Now the giant of the west has reached over the straining back of him of the east, and has grasped the band of blue silk which runs around his waist. He lifts that three hundred pounds as though it were nothing, and he throws him with a jerk over the rice bags. How the people yell! Some of them tear off their clothes and throw them into the ring which they will redeem with presents of money at the end of the day. They call out the name of the victor, and some of them hug each other in their delight at the success of their man. There is no sign of pool selling, though I am not sure but that some betting goes on. The defeated gathers himself up and walks away with bowed head. The victor goes to one side of the ring and squats down on his heels while the umpire holds up his hands and proclaims him successful.
    The prize is awarded and the apron of silk embroidered with gold is shown to the people. The victor receives it, and with his seconds behind him he marches away. Then another couple enter the ring, and the same sort of struggle goes on. Some matches last no more than a minute, and some are so evenly pitted that they strain for a quarter of an hour before one is victorious. The snakes of Laocoo never gripped their victims more tightly, and ribs are often broken, and men have been killed in these terrible struggles. Some wrestlers throw their opponents from one side of the ring to other, now and then one strikes a post and his skull is cracked open. There is no striking and hitting, and the rules are as rigid as those of our prize fighters. There are forty-eight different falls, and the umpires stop the matches at a single mismovement, and they now and then call a halt in order that their belts may be more tightly tied.

    The Japanese have very queer methods of physical training. These wrestlers pound their muscles to make them strong. They butt with their shoulders against posts, and they stamp the earth to strengthen the muscles of their legs. They have a wonderful strength of back and wrist, and a common test of strength is what is called wrist wrestling. Two of the men will sit opposite each other, with a little table between them. On this they will rest the bare elbows of their right arms, and grasping each other's hands will twist and turn, and see which can break the hold of the other. The acrobats can bend themselves into all sorts of shapes and their little boys go about through the streets and perform acrobatic feats which would be considered wonders in our circuses. The jinrikisha is used all over Japan, and this is always pulled by men. It is you know, a baby victoria, on two wheels, and these men pull you about in these little carriages at the rate of five to six miles per hour. I have had some hum n steeds which could make six miles an hour without turning a hair or getting outside of the shafts. I went twenty-five miles in four hours last summer, with two of these men to pull me, and we stopped for lunch on
the way. The road was comparatively level but we had some hills and on a day's ride these men could make better time than a horse. I have heard of their making seventy miles in twelve hours, and they do this not on meat and milk, but on rice and fish. Their calves are wonderfully developed and they sweat profusely.

    It is, in fact human muscle that still runs the land of Japan. There are few cattle, and outside of those used by the cavalry there are few horses. The fields are cultivated with a hoe, a sort of spade-like implement with a hoe handle and you see little plowing. Merchandise is carted through the city by men. The boards used by the carpenters are all sawed by hand, and mighty temples costing millions of dollars are now being made in Japan without the use of machinery. Logs which are used as beams are carried up by an army of men along a road which has been built up to the roof for this purpose, and which will be taken away when the building is completed. All classes of workmen uses their toes almost as much as their hands, and the cooper holds his tub between his feet while he squats on the ground and pounds on the hoops. In mountain traveling you are carried by men and it is only along the railroads and in the cities that you realize that Japan is fast becoming a modern machinery-driven nation. The rice fields are all cultivated by men and women and the tea which we drink is picked and fired by hand. Nearly every leaf of tea is picked over carefully, and a pound of tea which I judge contains at least a thousand leaves has had each leaf handled by a Japanese girl about a half dozen times. It is first picked from the bushes It is then dried in the sun. It is next put into great basins of clay or iron, with fires under them and is rubbed about again and again by a half-naked sweating Japanese girl, whose beady drops of perspiration now and then fall down and soak into the exhilarating leaves. After the firing it is again sorted and all the poor leaves are pick out and put into a lower grade of tea, while the others are carefully examined and each given its proper place. It is again handled when it is packed, rehandled by the grocer until each leaf has had a chance at the bacilli of about a score of mortals on this continent and Asia. I hope some day to write a letter on "Tea Without Frills," I when I will describe some other little appetizing matters in connection with the Chinese and Indian tea which may add to the gusto with which it is partaken of at our afternoon parties.

    Speaking of the physical development of the Japanese they understood massage long before it was brought into America or Europe, and nearly every Japanese workman is shampooned two or three times a week. Every wife is supposed to know how to knead the muscles of her husband, and one of the most affecting stories of Japanese fiction is about the dear little girl who leaves her play and her companions to press her little fingers all over the skin and squeeze every bit of the meat on her grandfather's bones. A large part of this shampooing is done by the blind. These men make a profession of it and there are no blind asylums in Japan. They go about with pipes in their mouths on which they whistle, and in the past they were the money lenders of the country. They had a blind man's union, which I believe still exists, and they shampoo both men and women. I took many shampoos during my stay in Japan and it is wonderful how it takes the tired feeling out of you. I usually stripped myself and put on a long cotton Japanese kimono and then sent my servant for a shampooer. He would bring in a bald-headed fellow with a door-knocker cue fastened to his glistening crown and with eyes which were almond slits with no light behind them. The man was always dressed in one of these night gown-like kimonos and he would pull his sleeves up so that his arms were bare to the shoulders. He would be led over to my bed, or, in the country, to the place where I lay on the floor, and would at once begin to pass his hands over my body. He would gouge my nerve centers with his thumb, and my whole frame would quiver. He would stretch each of my fingers and toes until it cracked and he found out hundreds of muscles which I never knew existed. All of his motion comes from his wrists, and he pounds the flesh again and again. He continues his work until every molecule of your frame has been put into action, and you feel at the time as though you had been run through a corn shelter. At the end, however, this sensation passes off and you are a new man. All your tired feeling has gone and you are again glad that you are alive.

Frank G Carpenter.