Sports of the Times
Tokyo Sidelight
By ARTHUR DALEY
Lieut. G. M. Keren writes from Tokyo to describe
the life of an Army censor. He says: “Radio Tokyo has been granted permission
to resume sports broadcasting. So I go to all the baseball games and wrestling
matches, along with my interpreter, and sit next to the announcer to make
sure he stays on the ball. Just like the old days except - how'd you like
to be the only white man in a wrestling arena with eight or ten thousand
Japanese all yelling for blood? It's a living. But I'll take Madison Square
Garden.
"Japanese wrestling is quite different from what
I'm used to seeing. They call it Sumo and it's not to be confused with
Jiu-Jitsu. Sumo involves a great deal of ritual and ceremony. The whole
setting, in a bomb-scarred arena, smelling of the squid that the people
eat instead of peanuts and popcorn, and the colorful pageantry, make it
all very interesting. The present meet ran for ten days and these Japanese
take it more seriously than we do the world series."