Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/105

Rh two groups of the Eight Diagrams, and the black eaves-curtain with its design of white waves represents the passion-calming element. At the base of each pillar sits an expert, whom age has compelled to retire from the arena, and who has acted as teacher to the men in the ring. Near him is placed a vessel of water with a wine-cup beside it, and wrestlers, before a contest, take a draught of this water, in deference to the old custom of warriors on the eve of a perilous undertaking who exchanged a "water-cup" (mizu-sakazuki) in token of farewell that might be for ever. The relations of the wrestlers to their teacher are the poetical phase of their career. They still regulate their treatment of him by the ancient formula of reverence, that to tread even within three feet of his shadow is disrespectful. Altogether the Japanese wrestler has no counterpart elsewhere. The nature of his profession is not reflected in his daily life; though uneducated, he knows how to conduct himself with propriety in the high society to which his patrons often introduce him; he has a fine moral code of his own which holds him in the path of honest manliness, and the crime of abusing his strength is almost unrecorded against him.

It has already been noted that the Japanese swordsman practised an art called by various names at different epochs or by different schools, but having for its fundamental principle the sub-