The wrestling season is in full swing, and the attention is drawn again to this most popular of all Japanese sports. Wrestling is the national sport of Japan, and has a long history behind it. It has undergone many changes through the ages, and suffered many vicissitudes, before it became the highly specialized sport of today. Sumo, or Japanese wrestling is so characteristically Japanese, so essentially a part of the national structure, that it would be unthinkable to imagine Japan without its sumo.
    Unlike western professional wrestling, which as its of "all in" or "catch as catch can" implies is nothing but a show of brute strength and altogether a bloody affair, Japanese wrestling is as much a matter of spiritual training as other Japanese national sports, such as kendo or judo.
    Not every man can become a "rikishi" (warrior of strength", the popular name for a Japanese wrestler. Only one man in a hundred becomes a champion, and the remaining ninety-nine fade into obscurity. They all start on the same basis, namely that of an unusually strong physique. But physique alone will not make a wrestler. It is the spirit that counts, and those with lack of proper spirit soon drop out of the game.

    We often see in the local papers announcements to the effect that a "future champion" has been found. Usually this "future champion" is a prodigious physical giant, still in his teens, and weighing twice or thrice any average boy of his age. In his school tournaments he has defeated all the other boys, and even his teachers, and in his village sports he has overthrown all opponents. The papers give him publicity, and the principal of his school and the village headman are loud in their eulogies of this "future champion".
    Filled with hope and rosy dreams, he leaves his native village, after a send off that any real champion would have been proud of, and comes to the capital to enter the camp of one of the champions he finds that he is the smallest of the "small fry".
    Henceforth everything depends on his own spirit. He is put through such a grueling that he doesn't know whether he is standing on his head, or on his feet. If he has the right spirit he comes through, but if he hasn't he drops out.

    All such disciples begin their career as "Chanko" cookers, or potboilers. Chanko is the popular name for wrestlers’ food. It consists of chopped up meat, fish, vegetables, etc. boiled in a huge cauldron. The cooking is not done recklessly, but with care, for if the cooking is bad, the disciples find that the iron fists of the older wrestlers can hit very hard indeed.
    Kyushuzan, one of the most promising wrestlers of today, found that his experience as a chanko boiler during his early days stood him in good stead when he was drafted and sent to the front in China. The fame of his cooking spread far and wide, and he was removed from the Signal Corps and put into the Commissariat.
    The disciples have to get up very early in the morning and rush to the market to buy meat, fish and other foodstuffs for their chanko menu. Early housewives are often astonished to find beside them huge, sleepy-eyed young giants, clad only in a yukata, and bare-footed, holding large parcels of meat or fish under their arms, and dangling huge bunches of vegetables from their hands.
    It is a sad beginning for the "future champions", but it is a path that has been trodden by all the champions in their early days. Present champions such as Futabayama, Minanogawa, Haguroyama, Maedayama and others were all chanko boilers during their days as disciples.
    It does not follow, however, that all chanko boilers become champions. Most of them drop out on the way. Then there are a few who find that their cooking has made more progress than their wrestling and give up the latter all together to open up mall restaurants catering to wrestlers.
    The disciples have to look after the personal comfort of their camp champion much as batmen look after the personal comfort of officers in the army. Sewing and washing are as much a part of their daily routine as cooking. This does not mean, however, that they are always cooking, washing or sewing. Most of their time is spent in rigid training.

    It is a mistake to suppose that wrestling is a moneymaking sport. The disciples do not receive a single sen, and since they cannot receive any money from home, they have to be content with the cast-off clothing of the older wrestlers.
    When they have progressed enough to appear in public matches they receive one yen and fifty sen every six months. Their income depends on the progress they make, but even the champions do not receive the fabulous sums that the public imagine they get. Participants in a championship match receive five hundred yen each, and a champion who wins all his matches gets ¥1,000.
    The popular wrestlers, however, have strong support in their fans, who contribute large sums of money to them, and who do not hesitate to sell everything in their houses for the sake of their favorites.

    Public tours and matches in the provinces are an important part of the wrestlers’ curriculum, for such tours and matches serve to increase their popularity, and popularity is an all-important factor of the game.
    So important is this matter of popularity that it is not uncommon for wrestlers who are ill and who have been ordered by their doctors to stay in bed, to insist on appearing in the ring so as not to disappoint the public.
    Such tours are expensive, but the expenses are more than repaid by the full houses that result from the popularity thus secured.
    Recently when the wrestlers were making a tour of the Kansai district, a sum of ¥3,000 was allotted for chanko expenses, and entrusted to Akinoumi, one of the prominent wrestlers. Akinoumi left the parcel containing the money in a taxi, but fortunately for him, the taxi driver was an honest man who has previously contributed his earnings to the War Relief Fund, and the money was returned to the wrestler after a slight delay.

    The training of the wrestlers is in a word, terrific. Bone and muscle, skin and sinew become unbelievably tough, so tough indeed that the toughness has to been seen to be believed.
    A champion's "hide" is so tough that a hypodermic needle fails to pierce it. A champion wrestler is so strong that his strength cannot be judged by ordinary standards. Once a famous Russian strong man visited Japan and created a furor by his remarkable feats of strength. One of his favorite feats was the twisting of a steel bar that no man in the audience could bend. When he visited the wrestlers’ quarters in Ryogoku, however, this strong man found that there were other men much stronger than himself. One of the wrestlers there asked to be shown the bar that the Russian had bent, and after looking at it, he grasped both ends and pulled it out straight.
    Minanogawa, a retired champion, is still so strong that he can crush steel grips as easily as an ordinary man would crush an eggshell. A visitor to the wrestlers’ training quarters was recently astonished when he found them tossing 150 pound sacks of rice at one another as though they were no heavier than ordinary medicine balls.
    The days of discipleship are the hardest, but those who come through and become champions are able to indulge in all the eccentricities they want to.
    Minanogawa created quite a sensation when he bought a small Datsun automobile that he could have carried on his back. Haguroyama, who with Futabayama, had the most meteoric rise to fame of all the wrestlers of modern times, likes to dress in tailcoat and striped trousers.
    All the champions are naïve, simple and delightful people, probably due to their lack of higher education, but they are all distinguished by two things. – A super-human physique and an iron will, the physique that enabled them to come through the terrific grueling of their early days, and the indomitable will to succeed that made them rise, step by step, from chanko boiler to champion.