Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/100

Rh the Military epoch entitles it to a place here, whereas its practice as a professional art belongs more properly to a later era. For obvious reasons, however, to say now at once what has to be said about it will be convenient, and as it is one of the Japanese institutions that specially attract the attention of foreigners visiting the Far East, no apology is needed for speaking of it with some minuteness.

In truth, the science of wrestling as seen in Japan must be classed as one of the things that are essentially Japanese. Its exact counterpart is not to be found in any other country. The wrestlers at the Olympic Games, in the Circus, in Nineveh and in Egypt, stood facing each other from the first, and while they resorted to various tactics of pulling, pushing, twisting the body, interlocking the limbs, and even hitting, their ultimate aim was to obtain the mastery over one another's legs and thus secure a fall. But in the Japanese science of wrestling, as practised since the eighth century, the fall is always a subordinate incident, the principal object being to force the adversary out of a circular ring fifteen feet in diameter. As in Greece and Rome, so also in Japan, the wrestler is almost completely naked, wearing nothing but a loincloth and a girdle. The combatants are required to begin by squatting opposite to each other in the centre of the ring, and the umpire stands close by, his prime duty being to see that