Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/104

Rh acquainted with about one hundred and fifty or one hundred and sixty "hands." Thus, during the Military epoch, when wrestling had a place scarcely second to archery and fencing in a soldier's training, great captains like Hatake-yama, Kawazu-no-Saburo, and Moritano-no-Goro, were as famous for wrestling as for the leadership of soldiers, and the forty-eight "hands" received various additions from them.

Wrestling in Japan has its esoterics. They are founded on the Chinese philosophy of the Ch'i. The easiest way to explain this is to describe the arena. There is a circular ring covered with sand, its circumference formed by sixteen bags of sand laid end to end. Entrances are made on the east and west by removing two of these bags; over the ring a roof is supported on four equidistant pillars, and under the eaves of the roof there is suspended a narrow curtain, which used formerly to be of black cloth with a conventional wave pattern, but is now purple. These things are all allegorical. The ring represents the primordial circle, chaos. The entrances, forming the ideograph "two," represent the primæval forces (the Yin and the Yang) from whose interactions all things were evolved. The four pillars represent the four seasons—that on the east, draped in blue, is spring; that on the west, draped in white, autumn; that on the south, draped in red, summer; and that on the north, draped in black, winter. The sixteen sand-bags represent