Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/99

Rh to place in the great cities and in the provinces, and the portion of their earnings that falls to their share in connection with these performances is a matter of arrangement with the lessee. The latter also furnishes them with food and drink—meat and sake (rice-beer)—in unlimited quantities. They observe no regimen in their diet, for obesity, so long as it does not interfere with their muscular efficiency, is an advantage; the greater their weight, the greater being their inertia, which, as will presently be understood, is a gain to Japanese wrestlers, though the vast accumulations of adipose tissue that some of them display seem at once repulsive and unworkmanlike to Occidental eyes. There is a strictly observed system of etiquette with regard to the manner of serving their meals, but it has no special interest except as the only etiquette with which their lives conform. For the continence and self-restraint elsewhere considered essential to the development of a high type of muscular energy are not observed with any strictness by these Japanese athletes. Many a career of high promise is wrecked on its threshold by sensual excess.

To adhere strictly to a chronological system in tracing the developments of every Japanese custom, would sometimes necessitate fragmentary and bewildering treatment. Wrestling is one of the subjects that does not lend itself to such division. The important position it occupied as a part of every samurai's training during