JAPANESE WRESTLERS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10566, 28 January 1895, Page 2

JAPANESE WRESTLERS.

(Frank G, Carpenter m the Detroit Free Press.) I sea that the most famous wrestlers of Japan have offered their services to the Emperor in the war with China. They have sent a delegation to him at Hiroshima, asking that they be sent to Corea and be given a place in the Japanese army. These men have dona a great deal in the crude wars of the past, but it is doubtful whether they will be of much use in connection with Gatling guns and Winchester rifles. They form a curious class of the Japanese people, and they are like no other athletes on the face of the globe. They seem to be of a race of their own. They are taller and heavier than the ordinary Japanese, and many of them are over six feat in height. The Japanese man is no taller than the average American girl. Ho has a long body and short legs. Ha ia as straight as a stick, but ha is stocky rather than tall. Those wrestlers weigh from 2001 b to 3001 b, and they are mountains of fab and beef. They oat quantities of meat, while the other people of Japan live largely upon vegetables, rice and fi"h. ■ They drink soup and beer by the gallon, and Professor Burtoii, of the Imperial University, who has taken' .tha.’ibe'st..- photographs of them, told me how two wrestlers whom he was entertaining one day in order to get their pictures, each drank two dozen bottles of bser and great quantities of soda water, ginger' ale and claret. These wrestlers have, features much the same as the ordinary Japanese, though their heads are much larger, and more like camion balls than anything else. They shave their heads from the forehead to the crown, leaving that over the ears and at the back to grow long, and tying it up on the top of the head in a queue like a door-knocker. They are by no means fierce-looking, and when I visited the wrestling matches I was taken among them and chatted with some of them through my interpreter. I felt their muscles, and they were aa hard as iron, and v?hat I had supposed to he great lumps of fat I found to be BUNDLES OF MUSCLE. These wrestlers date back almost to the beginning or Japanese history. The Daimios kept a corps of them about their persons, and when the princes travelled over the country they always had some of these men with them. They gave exhibitions at funeral and wedding processions, and they are mentioned in Japanese history as far back as twenty-four years before Christ. About 500 years before Columbus discovered America the throne of Japan was the prize of a wrestling match. The Emperor had two sons. Whether they were twins op not I don’t know, but they both aspired to tiie throne. Their father told them to each pick out a champion wrestler, and the one who backed the victor should be Emperor. The boys agreed to this, and the successful backer succeeded his father. Prom that time to this wrestling has gone all over Japan, and the Japanese history is filled with the exploits of wrestlers. There are regular matches held every year in the big cities, a lid those in Tokio and Osaka last for weeks, and the champions of the castora and western parts of the empire are .pitted against each other. Not long ago wrestling became a great,fad, and one of the Cabinet ministers, I am told, entered the ring, while the noblest men of the Empire were ready to meet nil comers. In 1888 Count Kurods, the Prime Minister, gave wrestling a great boom, and during the post year some of the moot famous matches ever ' hold ia Japan have taken place. I saw FAMOUS MATCHES - in both Tokio and Osaka, and I spent one day at a wrestling match at the Japaneae capital, in which one hundred and twenty of the greatest wrestlers of Japan struggled together. Tha wrestling began at ten ia tha morning and lasted until five in the afternoon, and there was not a minute during this time that wrestlers wore not ia the ring. But lot me give you some idea of one of these Japanese contests. Imagine the biggest circus tent you have ever seen to be spread out upon a network of bamboo poles so that it covers about 10,000 people. These ait on the ground and in boxes or on platforms which are built up perhaps ten feet above the ground, and in the centre of the crowd there ia a little pavilion, about twenty feet square, supported by four posts aa largo around as telegraph poles. This pavilion is trimmed with red, and its posts are wrapped with rod cloth, while about its top there is a curtain of blue. It has a raised foundation perhaps 2fh high, and a ring of rice bags runs around its floor, enclosing a circle 12ft in diameter, which is floored with black earth, This is the famed wrestling ring of Japan, and in such rings all these matches are fought. The giants struggle inside the rice bags, and if one can throw the other over these or can fling him to the earth he ia proclaimed the victor. At each corner of this pavilion, against one of the red posts, sits *a sober, dark-faced, heavy-browed

Japanese, dressed in a blaok kimono. He it raised upon cushions, and sits cross-legged, and he forms one of the four judges in case there is a dispute as to the decision oi the umpire. In the centre of the ring stands the umpire, wearing the old brocada. costume of the days of the Daimios. He screeches out as though he had the colic and was screaming with pain, but his shrill cries penetrate to every part of the circus, and he is a man of great importance and long training. The spectator* squat on the ground back of the ring, and on the platform. Each has a little tobacco box before him, with some coals of fire in it. All sit cross-legged,, and nearly all smoke little

METAL PIPES WITH BOWLS AS BIG AS A THIMBLE.

But let us take a look at the wrestlers. There are scores of them squatting about the ring, juet outside of the rice bags. They are entirely naked, with the exception of a band of blue silk, four inches wide, which runs round their waists and between their legs, and is tied in a knot at the back. This has a fringe about four inches long, which falls to their thighs. Here come two into the ring. They are the most famous wrestlers Of the east and west, and the people receive them with clapping. What giants they are and how queerly they act! At the corners ther» ■ are buckets of water. They walk up to these and gulp down great swallows. They fill their mouths and squirt the fluid into the air so that it falls back in a spray over their cream-coloured bodies. They take bits of paper and wipe themselves, and they look about the audience and show off their muscles, while a yell goes up from 5000 throats. They pound their naked cheats with their- fists. They slap their brawny thighs. They lift their legs up as high as their shoulders, and they stamp their feet down on the wellpacked earth so that the pavilion tremble* as though a cyclone were passing through, it. Look at that man’s arms. He looks more like a man with the dropsy then a great athlete, and his body seems to he padded with great hunches of fat. He is the champion of the east, and the man from the west is almost as large. Now the two giants walk to opposite sides of th* ring. They bow to the umpire and judges, and then squat down on their heels . and look at each other. They come to the centre of the ring. They bend oyer and rest their fists on the floor. They poke their great beads to the front, and their big almond eyes almost burst from their buttonhole sockets.

HOW THEY GLARE AT EACH OTHER! They ate watching for the signal to close. Now they rest for a moment, picking up the dirt from the ring and rubbing it under their armpits aud over their bodies. Then they kneel and glare again. The umpire watches them closely. He waits until they breathe together, and than gives the signal. As ho does so they crouch like tigers and spring into each other’s arms. Each tries to grab the belt of the other. They wrap their arms around each other, and you almost hear their ribs crack. The bunches of fat have become mountains of muscle, and both arms and leg look like iron. Their biceps stand out. Their calves quiver. Now the giant of the west has reached over the straining back of him of the east, and baa grasped the baud of blue silk which tuns round his waist. He lifts that three hundred pounds as though It were nothing and he throws him with a jerk over therice bags. How the people yell! Some of them tear oft their clothes and throw them into the ring, which they will redeem with presents of money at the end of the day. They call out the name of the victor, and soma of them hug each other in their delight at the success of their man. The defeated' giant gathers himself up and walks away with bowed head. The victor goes to one side of the ring and squats down on his heels while the umpire holds up his hands and proclaims him successful. The prize is awarded and the apron of silk embroidered with gold is shown to the people. The victor receives it, and with Ms seconds behind him he marches away. Then another couple enter the ring, and the same sort of struggle goes on. Some matches last no more than a minute, and coma are so evenly pitted that they strain for a quarter of an hour before one if. victorious. 1 THE SNARES OI THE LAOCOON never gripped their victims more tightlyand ribs are often broken, and men have been billed in these terrible struggles. There is no striking or hitting, and the rules are as rigid as those of our prizefighters. There are forty-eight different falls, and the umpires stop the matches at a single iniamovement, and they now and then call a halt in order that the belts' of the wrestlers may be more tightly tied. ; The Japanese have very queer methods of physical training. These wrestlers pound their muscles to make them strong. They butt" with their shoulders against posts, and they stamp the earth to strengthen the muscles of their legs. They have a wonderful strength of back and wrist, and a common test of strength is what is called wrist wrestling. Two of the men will oife opposite to each other, with a little table between them. On this, they will rest the bare elbows of their right arms, and grasping each other’s hands will twist and turn, and see which cau break the. hold of the other. Tha acrobats can bend themselves into all sorts of shapes, and their little boys go about through the streets and perform acrobatic feats which would bo considered wonders in'our circuses. HUMAN MUSCLE STILL BUNS THE LAND , OP JAPAN. ’ There are few cattle, and outside of those used by the cavalry there are few horses. The fields are cultivated with a hoe, a sort of a spado-like implement with a hoe handle, and you see little ploughing. Merchandise is carted through the cities by men. The boards used by the carpenters are all sawed by hand, and mighty temples coating millions of dollars are now being made in Japan without the use of machinery. Logs which are used as beams are carried np by an array of men along a road which has been built up to the roof for this purpose, and which will bo taken away when the building io completed. All classes of workmen, use their toes almost as much aa their hands, and the cooper holds his tub between his feet while he equate on the ground and pound* on the hoops. In mountain travelling you are carried by men, and it is only along the railroads and in the ’ cities that you realise that Japan is fast becoming ft modern machinery-using nation. The rice fields are all cultivated by men and women, and the tea which we drink ia picked and fired by hand. Nearly every leaf of tea is picked over carefully, and a pound of tea, which, I judge, contains at least a thousand leaves, has had each leaf handled by_a Japanese girl about a half dozen times. It ia then dried ia the sun. It is next put into great basins of clay or iron, with fires under th em, and is rubbed about again and again by hand by a half naked, sweating Japanese girl, whose beady drops of perspiration now and,then fall down and soak into the exhilarating leaves. After the firing it is again sorted, and all the poor leaves are picked out and pub into a lower grade of tea, while the others are carefully examined and each given its proper place. It is again handled when it ia packed, and rehandled by the grocer. ~;