The boy travellers in the Far East : adventures of two youths ... - Library

WRESTLERS IN THE RING. 229
" I thonglit we were going to a liall, but it was iiotliiug of the sort, as
we iinderstaTid a hall. We went into a large tent, which was made by
stretching matting over a space enclosed by a high fence; the fence
formed the walls of the building, and the matting made tlie roof. We
had the ground to sit on or stand on, but soon after we went in a man
brought us some chairs, and we sat down. In the centre of the tent there
was a cii'cular mound something like a circus ring; it was perhaps two
feet high and ten feet across, and there was a flat place outside of it
where the master of ceremonies was to stand and see that everything was
fair. We paid twenty-five cents to go in, and then we paid about five
cents more for each chair ;
of coui'se we were in the best places, and only
a few others were in that part. I don't know how much the Japanese
paid in the poor places, but I don't believe it was more than five cents.
"In a little while after we went in, the performance began. A boy
came into the ring from a room at one side of the tent, and he walked as
if he were playing tlie king, or some other great personage. AVlien he got
to the middle of the ring, he opened a fan he carried in his I'iglit hand.
He opened it with a cpiick jerk, as though he were going to shake it to
pieces; and after he had opened it he announced the names of the wres-
tlers who were to come into the first act. If I hadn't l)een told what he
was doing, I should have thought he was playing something from Shak-
speare, he made such a fuss about it. Then he went out and the wrestlers
came in, with a big fellow that Fred said must be the boss wrestler. He
looked like an elephant, he was so big.
" The wrestlers were the largest men I liave seen in Japan ; and the
fact is I didn't suppose the country contained any men so large. As near
as I could see, they had more fat tlian muscle on them; but there must
have been a good deal of muscle, too, for they were strong as oxen. Doc-
tor Bronson says he has seen some of these wrestlers carry two sacks of
rice weighing a hundred and twenty -five pounds each, and that one man
carried a sack with his teeth, while another took one under his arm and
turned somersets with it, and did not once lose his hold. The Doctor
says these men are a particular race of Japanese, and it used to be the
custom for each prince to have a dozen or more of these wrestlers in his
suite to furnish amusement for himself and his friends. Sometimes two
princes would get up a match with their wrestlers, just as men in New
York get up matches between dogs and chickens. Tlien there were
troupes of wrestlers, who went around giving exhibitions, just as they some-
times do in America. But you never saw such fat men in all your life as
they were ; not fat in one place, like the man that keeps tlie grocery on