Edgren's Column
The real Japanese wrestling game has never been seen
in the country. Now the agile press agent has managed to rake up a match
between "two Japanese giants, each weighing over 200 pounds."
The average New Yorker would be willing to pay first-class
side-show prices to see a Jap weighing 200. All that we ever have seen
would hardly balance the beam at 120.
Wrestling in Japan is an inherited profession. A
wrestler, like an actor, must be able to boast a long line of wrestling
ancestors before he can attract much attention. From his infancy
the coming wrestler is trained for size and weight. Agility is nothing.
Many of the best are over six feet in height ad weigh from three to four
hundred pounds. The Japs are famous for the way in which they manufacture,
in a few generations, strange plants, fishes and animals. Some families
of their wrestlers, grown in the same scientific manner, are huge giants,
of great height and weight that would make Jefferies look like a dwarf.
The style of wrestling indulged in by these big
fellows is unique. They first sit on their haunches facing each other in
a small circle marked on the ground. Like modern boxers, they pretend to
regard each other with the greatest contempt. Each picks up a pinch of
dust now and then and throws it into the air, so that it will settle on
the other fellow, this being a sign of great disrespect. Finally, with
much ceremony, they lean together their combined weight of about a third
of a ton and begin to shove. The man first pushed out of the ring loses.