The order of things has been reversed. The East has come to the West at last. Today is Japan day in this city, for thirty-two of her greatest wrestlers will show the Orient's greatest sport at the old Vernon arena this afternoon and evening. It is the Japanese world's series. And the matches will be for blood and money.
    All last night Japanese poured into the city on trains, street cars, in automobiles, in wagons and truck carts. East First street was fairly seething with them. It is estimated that 30,000 of the little brown men will do their country's champions honor today. It will be a spectacle such as America may never see again.
    All day yesterday they swarmed at that the old fight arena. They have hung a gigantic circus canvas over it and covered the floor of the ring with a foot-thickness of baked mud and sand. They have rewired it all and tonight it will be as light as day.
    T. Dewanoumi, the greatest champion that Japan ever had, was on the job seeing everything in order. He is a huge bulk of a man, who weighs 360 pounds and is as hard as a dog biscuit. He wears two cauliflower ears like Ad Wolgast. He carries his own private brand of cigars in a leather case with gold initials. He cuts their ends off with a gold clipper. He only differs from American champions in that he is modest and polite and looks like a. statesman. He has retired now and is head of the greatest athletic organization in Japan, the Tokio Wrestling Association. He won the championship eleven consecutive years – the longest any one man had held it.
    Umegatani, the present champion, and Nishinoumi, his rival, and the other thirty spent the day resting at the Mikado Hotel. The champion also weighs 350 pounds. His rival is a 400-pounder.
    The matches will not be for fun today. All Japan's greatest wrestlers are controlled by this association. A record book is kept and the salary of the men depends on the showing made during the year. They are paid according to the matches they win. And these today count just the same the same as if they were held in Japan. When it comes to the great tournament in Tokio the wrestlers are rated, matched and paid on the strength of their year's performances. So these matches tomorrow will be in dead earnest. If the United States had some such system, wrestling would not be a tabooed sport today, admitted the crookedest of them all.
    T. Dewanoumi said yesterday that in Japan they wrestled on a concrete floor with two inches of sand and that never a day passed in their training camp without somebody being knocked cold.
    Their sport is different from the American game. If any part of the man besides his feet touches the ground or he is pushed out of the ring, he is thrown.
    The tournament here will last four days, beginning this afternoon at 3 o'clock. Each performance will run until 7 o'clock at night. Everybody is welcome to attend who has at least $2 and at most $10. The Japanese who are born sportsmen would like for the Americans to see their sport. But they are not out begging them to attend, because there will be 30,000 Japanese at Vernon - the greatest crowd that ever witnessed a combat in that famous old arena of champions. But it will probably be the only chance Americans will have to see the great sport of the Orient participated in by its champions this side of Japan.