A PAIR OF WRESTLERS AND THEIR MANAGER.
"Some of them could hardly see out of their eyes on account of the fat around them; and when their arms were doubled up, they looked like the hams of a hog. I was told that the Japanese idea of a wrestler is to have a man as fat as possible, which is just the reverse of what we think is right. They train their men all their lives to have them get up all the fat they can; and if a man doesn't get it fast enough, they put him to work, and tell him he can never be a wrestler. It is odd that a people so thin as the Japanese should think so much about having men fat; but I suppose it is because we all like the things that are our opposites. But this isn't telling about the wrestling match.
"After the herald had given the names of the wrestlers who were to make the first round, the fellows came in. They were dressed without any clothes to speak of, or rather they were quite undressed, with the exception of a cloth around their loins. They came in on opposite sides of the ring, and stood there about five feet apart, each man resting his hands on his knees, and glaring at the other like a wild beast. They looked more like a pair of tigers than human beings, and for a moment I thought it was not at all unlike what a bull-fight in Spain might be.
THE CLINCH.
"There they stood glaring, as I told you, and making a noise like animals about to fight. They stamped on the ground and made two or three rushes at each other, and then fell back to watch for a better chance. They kept this up a minute or so, and then darted in and clinched; and then you could see their great muscles swell, and realize that they were as strong as they were fat.
"They did not try to throw each other, as we do when we wrestle, but they tried to push from one side of the ring to the other. I couldn't understand this until the Doctor told me that it is not necessary for one of the men to be thrown. All that is to be done is for one of them to push the other outside the ring; and even if he only gets one foot out, the game is up. Only once during all we saw of the match did anybody get thrown down, as we should expect to see him in a wrestling match in America. And when he did get fairly on the ground, it was not very easy for him to rise, which is probably the reason why the rules of the Japanese ring are so different from ours.