Wrestling holds just about the place in Japan that baseball holds in this country. There are national organizations of wrestlers that hold annual matches and tour the country, just like our major leagues. There are also minor leagues and "bush" leagues among the wrestlers. And the analogy is completed by the fact that all over Japan young men gather in vacant lots on summer evenings and have amateur wrestling matches.
    This Japanese wrestling is not eh "Jujitsu," which has been so widely advertised in this country, in Japan this wonderful method of fighting is regarded no as a sport, but as a means of self-defense. The wrestling which occupies such a high place as a spectacle and a pastime is a rather stupid game of pushing, pulling and lifting, in which brute force and weight count for more than anything else. The professionals of this sport are always enormously fat, a great, tight belly being one of the most formidable weapons that can be brought into the ring while a weight of two hundred pounds or more is indispensable to high achievement.
    The average professional wrestler is a person of rather low intelligence, but will display in the ring a remarkable cunning and resourcefulness of the animal sort. The wrestlers wear only a sort of apron and a belt. It is legitimate to grasp and hold one's opponent by his belt. Occasionally one of the powerful contestants will get a firm grip on the know at the back of his opponent's belt, lift him and carry him out of the ring with a shout of triumph. More often the event degenerates into a long, grunting contest of push and pull. It is a dull and unedifying to an occidental, but the Japanese fans find it intensely interesting, and extras are gotton out to announce the ...(missing)