The World, Monday Evening 3rd April 1905 (Page 10)

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.