The martial spirit of the Japanese race is reflected in their love for wrestling. What baseball is to the American, cricket to the Englishman or golf to the Scotch, wrestling is to the citizen of the Flowery Kingdom. It is, par excellence, the national sport. Unlike baseball. cricket or golf, it is of most ancient and honorable origin. The first match of which there is any record took place in the year Caesar's nephew assumed the imperial crown and more than twenty years before the founder of Christianity was born. In 27 B.C. Nomi-no-Sukune wrestled in the palace at Nara with one Kehaya, who prided himself on his great strength, and threw him down with such force that be died on the spot. The Mikado covered the successful wrestler with honors, and after his death Sukune was deified and to this day is worshipped as the patron of Japanese wrestlers.
    While not enjoying today the immunities and privileges which were his before the restoration adjusted things in harmony with Western views of civilization the wrestler still continues to be in a Japanese community a personage of some interest and consideration. Boys look up to him with awe and veneration, while bashful maidens divide their struggling affections between him and the ever popular actor. The old folk see in him one of the representatives of another order of things now rapidly disappearing - the "good old times," the "golden age," for which every ancient worthy in every land and clime has sighed since this wicked world first started on its downward course. He is an interesting landmark, as it were, of Japanese civilization, but not, I am bound to say, a handsome one. Outside the ring he is easily recognized by his enormous stature - enormous as compared with that of his average countryman - his extraordinary girth, his waddling gait and the assumption of superiority over his fellow beings with which his physical proportions seem to inspire him.
    The European dress craze which in the early sixties and for many years thereafter appeared to have seized upon all classes and both sexes has left the wrestler untouched. To this day he is the one man who may be said, alone among Japanese of distinction, to have consistently clung to the national costume. He even goes so far as to retain his queue and a peculiar build of clogs not worn nowadays by any one else.
    Like other sports, wrestling has had its ups and downs in the popular esteem. Jukichi Inouye, in a very instructive article on the subject recently published, traces the popularity which wrestling enjoys at the present day to matches that were held in 1881 on the occasion of the Emperor's visit to the ex-daimyo of Satsuma. Under the Tokugawa dynasty - that is to say, during the period of "the great peace" - wrestlers enjoyed special privileges because their art was still considered of military importance and their services were likely at any moment to be required by the State. They ranked next to the Samurai. They were exempted from all tolls on public highways, could order post horses at the same reduced rate as the Samurai, and were permitted to enter theatres and other places of public amusement as deadheads. There wide popularity was, however, mainly due to the patronage of the daimyo or other great feudatories. Every wrestler of the first grade was backed by a daimyo with the willing support of his retainers, and his honor was jealously watched by the whole clan. When the restoration came the wrestler's special privileges were taken away from him. His position became no higher than that of any other professional. Indeed, he is today compelled like the rest to take out a license for pursuing his calling. The treatment, in fact, to which he is now subjected was part of that reaction against militarism which ended in the retirement to private life of the Shogun and the restoration to power of the Emperor. He found it is true, among the hitherto despised class of merchants patrons as munificent as ever as he had had in the ranks of the nobility, but his prosperity and the high consideration once paid him are forever gone.
    Every large town has its wrestling ring. The one in Tokio is a fair sample of most. Imagine a frame building, about 180 feet long by 150 feet wide, covered by a canvas roof. Inside, on the four sides, are tiers of seats and boxes which command a view of the ring itself, formed as a rule by heaping hardened earth, about thirty inches high, in a perfect circle of twenty feet in diameter. The whole suggests, except as to size, the circus ring at home, or a pie on an enlarged scale. The whole is surmounted, but so as not to obstruct the view of the audience, by a dais supported by four pillars. At opposite pillars are pails of water for the wrestlers to drink from before or during a bout. On the side of the pails are a basket of salt and a bundle of paper slips, the former to purify the body for the contest which, it is said, may possibly end in death, and the latter to wipe the face. Near by is a little shrine dedicated to Nomi-no-Sukune, the guardian deity of the wrestlers, already referred to, before which offerings of rice and water are made every morning while the matches last. The water is afterward sprinkled to purify the ring. Wrestlers come upon the ring from opposite sides, supposed to be the east and west, according to the side to which they belong. The umpire stands on the north side of the ring and faces the south.
 

    The Japanese wrestler, unlike his European or American colleague, doesn't train down, but "up," as it were. He not only depends for success upon agility and muscular strength, but also relies upon weight as a factor likely to determine the issue of a struggle. The rules of the ring are of the strictest. If a wrestler should fall, touch the ground with the knee, hand or any part of the body, or step outside of the ring, he is declared defeated. Butting and tripping are freely indulged in, and in a manner that would not be countenanced at home, perhaps. The most amusing sight, though, which I witnessed was when one burly chap bodily lifted his antagonist by the loincloth and carried him outside of the ring. There are said to be no less than 170 ways of throwing an antagonist, but I am not enough of an enthusiast to be able to define them. Previous to closing in upon each other there is much ceremony to be observed. The contestants stretch out their arms and clasp hands in token of their willingness to abide by the umpire's decision. They also stretch their legs and stamp on the ground five times to give elasticity to their limbs. They also drink water, wipe their mouths with paper and throw pinches of salt over their shoulders. All this is part of the traditions of the profession and subject to the regulations of the guild of wrestlers.
    There are no "bleachers" to dispute the decisions of the umpire. So great is the confidence of the public in his official integrity that his decrees are rarely, if ever, questioned. There is an elaborate school of theory and practice through which be has to go to qualify himself for the discharge of his duties. He decides when the time has arrived to separate struggling wrestlers, and it is part of his duties to set them again in the same position as when be parted them, when they are sufficiently rested. In this he excels. The minuteness, indeed, with which he reproduces their exact position, not a finger being misplaced, is a measure of his skill. To provide against the umpire's authority suffering from suspected errors of judgment, he always takes care when a bout ends in a dogfall or is otherwise uncertain to consult the referees, and if they disagree the opinion of the wrestlers watching on both sides of the arena is also invited. When the bout is over the victor squats on his side of the ring, while the umpire, pointing to him with his fan, pronounces his name. The defeated wrestler leaves the arena without ceremony.
    To be declared victor of the "meet" a wrestler has not only to be prepared to wrestle successfully with every comer, up to a certain number every day, but he has also to keep the same pace going while the contests are in progress - two weeks, as a rule. It will be been, therefore, that to become champion is no easy task. Once having attained that distinction, however, he is privileged to assume the title of kinoshita kaizan, signifying "invincible," and to wear the yokozuna, a cloth belt woven like a rope and elaborately tied behind.

M. G. S.