Nagaoka, Echigo, Japan, October 27.
    NAGAOKA is something of a metropolis to the surrounding villages. It is here the country women come carrying enormous bunches of twigs piled high up on their backs which they sell for kindling and return home with sugar and soy, kimonos and hairpins. Here the men bring bundles of wood, baskets or vegetables and country produce to exchange for dry fish, tobacco and sake.
    Here is the center of all the country festivals and here comes an occasional troop of actors and acrobats to empty out purses of yens and fill our hearts with joy. Once in a great while a genuine artist will make his way over the mountains, stopping here on his way to some further point. This happened a couple of weeks ago when a sumo was held and some of Japan's most famous wrestlers took part.
 

    In one sense of the word we were in the midst of the town's enthusiasm for the big temporary building put up for the three days' matches was at one end of our street and the yagura at the other. The building called sumogoya, or wrestling barn, was a structure large enough to accommodate 3,000 people. It was made of upright logs supporting a framework or bamboo, the posts and crossing poles tied firmly with straw ropes. The sides and roof were covered with coarse straw matting. The yagura at the other end of the street is a tower which is always built whenever wrestlers of a high grade are to appear. It was about 60 feet in height. At the top was a small platform roofed with straw matting. There sat the drummers, who pounded without cessation from starry morning until the matches of each day were ended.
    The sounding of the drum is a prayer to the god for fair weather. The origin of this custom may have been practical, as all matches used to take place in the open air. Superstition has s strong hold now, and however well protected, from the weather the Sumogoya may be, there is never wrestling on a rainy day. The announcement for the three three days' wrestling always means three pleasant days. Should it rain even the most important matches are postponed or given up entirely.
 

    On the first day the drum began beating about 4 o'clock in the morning. There was no sleep for our household after that, so we got up and watched with an opera glass from the upper porch to see what we could of the preparations. By 5 o'clock the street presented a busy scene. Men were putting up bamboo bamboo poles on which were fastened by their sides long, bright-colored banners. Each held the name of a popular wrestler and each was topped with the noshi, or gist-marl showing it had been presented by admiring friends. Boys were carrying white wooden buckets of water and packages of white paper cut in squares and swinging from a cord, and one boy had the sacred gohei or short stick of while shinto papers which was to be put in a prominent place in honor of the god of wrestling.
    My American friend says the wrestlers are the only big thing in Japan. Everything else is small and dainty. They certainly are large, the most famous ones being perfect mountains of flesh. But they are usually so lithe and active that when in motion there is no suggestion of weight or clumsiness. The present champion of the empire is about 7 feet in height and weighs 400 pounds. The men on the street looked especially large because just at this hour the oil women were going to work, and there were many two-wheeled carts passing, all pulled and pushed by women. As a rule, these oil women are sturdy and rosy cheeked, but of course, they are small in stature and beside the great sumo they looked like dwarfs.
    Of the 300 wrestlers in town, only 50 took an active part in the matches. The rest were carrier. Servants and cheap fellows - many of them youths whom nature had given large bodies and strong muscles and who, having won fame in some little village, were induced by the flattery of friends and a limitless confidence in their own powers to leave home and join a group of wrestlers, proudly accepting any inferior position, believing it would in time lead to fame.
    Each wrestling company always has, in addition to the umpire, two or more jurors. These are usually old wrestlers, once famous, but now retired by age. They are given prominent and honored places and are looked upon with the greatest respect, as their presence is always considered an honor. One or the jurors of this Sumo was a handsome old man of 70 years. Before the revolution most Daimios and high Samurais had wrestlers of their own, and this man was a private wrestler or my father's. With the ruin of my family he found a prominent place among the professionals, after many years of public life finally retired and was immediately made a juror.
    The pride of wrestlers is that they are born for that profession. They say their gigantic bodies are a gift from heaven. The position of wrestlers has always be high, skilled strength being looked upon with great respect in Japan. During the feudal period those above a certain rank were privileged to wear two swords.
    The old wrestler juror was a son of a wealthy farmer in the vicinity of this town. His mother died at his birth, his father was unwisely indulgent and the little fellow had his own willful way from childhood. He was an unusually large child, the neighbors in the village even now tell marvelous stories of his child-strength. In this the father took great pride, until the time came when the boy reached an age to help him till the fields. Then he awoke to a realization of his false training, for the boy refused to work and spent all his time in wrestling and other athletic games.
    One day when my father was out hunting, accompanied by his attendants, he passed through the village where the old farmer lived. This boy were among a number of amateur wrestlers gathered in the village temple grounds. The strength and activity of the farmer boy attracted the attention of the castle wrestler who was among my father's attendants. A few words of praise were sufficient to start a torrent of pleadings from the boy to be taken and trained.
    The youth was brought to our household and became the pupil of my father's wrestler. In time he took his teacher's place and now, thirty years later, is enjoying the highest honors that his profession can bestow. His devotion to his fatherly lord is perhaps impossible for western minds to comprehend. He still, by permission of my mother, wears the family crest and whenever he comes near Nagaoka he never falls to visit the grave of his old lord.
    Through this old retainer our family was given the most honored box in the building. We felt a little conspicuous, but as the guests and under the protection of this honored, old gray-haired man, we were looked upon with envy by all.
    The matches began at 8 o'clock in the morning, but as the best are always reserved until the last, we did not go until the middle of the afternoon. In the forenoon the games are mostly between the little known wrestlers. Each one is thus given a chance to prove himself and in time many win their way to an honored position.
    The great building presented a strange sight. Around the four sides ran a rude platform divided into squares. These were the boxes of wealthy onlookers. They were gay with the bright dresses and painted faces of the geishas. There was also a frequent sprinkling of sumo, easily recognized by their naked bodies and queerly-tied cues.
    Occasionally there was a box in which sat a company of quietly dressed, interested looking men and women. The crowd of perhaps two thousand or more sat on the ground, which was covered by straw mats. Many were smoking, many more were eating, but everybody looked interested and wide awake. Why Japanese people cannot go to an entertainment without taking lunch I do not know, but they turn everything into a picnic.
    The lurches mostly came from a nearby restaurant. Those handed into the boxes were elegant and arranged most artistically in beautiful lacquered boxes, but the hundreds of and boys on the ground generally contented themselves with little white wood boxes containing rice, fish, a few vegetables and a bit of ginger or pickled daikon.
 

    Everybody had tea and the little brown pots were scattered everywhere over floor, mixed in with the masses of people that, however close they sat, never seemed to crowd each other.
    Many of these people were men of intelligence and some culture, but poor in purse, and such enthusiastic lovers of the sport that they would rather sit on the ground three days than occupy an expensive box for one. Many were students, many business men, and there was a large sprinkling of young boys, but far the greater number were farmers and countrymen whose one enjoyment of the year was their attendance at this Sumo. Almost all men cut their hair now, but there were a good many at the old fashioned cues to be seen in looking over the masses of black heads below, and of course every grade of dress and undress of the common people. A good many young men, in imitation of the Sumo and in utter disregard of the indifferent policemen standing around, wore no clothing except the loin cloth. Some, more lawfully inclined, had a light haori pulled up across the shoulders, leaving the rest of the body bare. I was never in a Sumogoya before and, as I looked around the great building with its hundreds of ill-assorted people, I thought the sun sifting down through the loose-woven straw roof had certainly never shone on a more motley crowd than the one gathered there.
    In the center of the room was the dohyo (earth bale) a raised square of ground, perhaps thirty feet across. At the corners were huge posts which supported a temple-shaped roof. This was hung with beautiful silk curtains presented by various admirers. The posts of the dohyo extended in irregular lengths far above the straw roof. These posts are never cut, some superstitious belief extending them invisibly to the sky. Thus the Sumo wrestles "between earth and heaven."
    Probably only a few foreign men who come to Japan do not see a wrestling match. A description of one as it may be seen in Tokyo would probably contain nothing new to many readers, but a match held in a country town is a different thing. The wrestling itself cannot materially differ, but the surroundings, the audience and the method of expressing enthusiasm are all unlike.
    I will not attempt to describe the wrestling, for I understood nothing of the science of the art. I only know that there are certain rules for guidance, the one most frequently alluded to in literature having reference to the "forty-eight falls" - twelve throws, twelve lifts, twelve twists and twelve throws over the back. There are two divisions of wrestlers - Eastern and Western - and in every match each division is represented. Sometimes sides are formed of ten or twenty, where one champion is obliged to throw three opponents before being proclaimed a victor. This is extremely difficult, requiring tremendous power of endurance. This was not the game in the Nagaoka matches.
    Before each match was called a man looking unnaturally small among the great Sumo clapped two sticks together to attract the attention of the audience. An old man in ceremonious dress announced the names, then the Sumo stepped up to the dohyo - one from the East and one from the West. They were naked except for a dark loin-cloth ornamented with long, loose fringe. The first thing they did was to pick up a bit of rick straw and take some salt from a bowl placed near the corner of the dohyo. They tossed it over each shoulder as a purifying ceremony, then they spread their arms, lifting them to the level of the forehead. This was their salutation to each other.
    The umpire is kamishimo and holding a flat, curved fan of wood in his hand, watched closely to see that, no rule was broken, calling out encouraging words every moment while the wrestling was going on. Three times the opponents wrestled, repeating each time the ceremony of tossing the salt and saluting. The one who won twice out of the three games was declared victor.
    The match must be within the ring of the dohyo and one pushed outside of it is defeated. Occasionally the interest grew intense when a seemingly conquered wrestler would hold the place with one foot until by some mysterious wheel he managed to place himself again on safe ground. I saw the muscle of many a bare arm and leg in the audience tense and strained at an exciting moment.
    It was not the barbarous sight I had expected, and so much of it seemed to be accomplished without any effort that it was difficult for me to understand the enthusiasm that occasionally seized the crowd. The jurors sat with stolid faces, but the audience went wild. People arose from their seats, they yelled and shouted the names of the wrestlers, the geishas chimed in with shrill cries or "East" or "West," and for a short time the whole room was a mass of writhing, moving, twisting, shouting humanity.
    Several years ago it was the custom, when the excitement was at its highest, to throw things toward the wrestlers, but the law has now laid its hand on the practice. Everything was thrown through the air - sashes, tobacco pouches, silk haoris - even some of the geishas pulled off their beautiful obis and tossed them toward the dohyo.
    The Mikado was once selected by the god of wrestling. One of the early Emperors died leaving two sons and they wrestled for the throne. The victor took the scepter and the vanquished became a loyal subject. In some countries such a condition might have caused a civil war, but here the result of the trial was accepted with that philosophical acquiescence in the inevitable which foreigners sometimes call the "most curious characteristic of the Japanese people."

ETSU INAGAKI SUGIMOTO