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36 this prohibition appears to have been disregarded, as it was followed by another a few years later.

Not long after Shiganosake’sShiganosuke’s [sic] time, it was proposed to build in Yedo a temple with a frontage of a hundred and thirty-two yards, in imitation of such an edifice in Kyoto; and permission was obtained from the authorities to harden the ground by professional wrestlers’ holding six days’ matches on the site. The booth was daily crowded; and from that time matches were held there after the temple

had been constructed. When, after its destruction by fire, it was rebuilt on another site, these matches became annual; but in 1769 when the new temple was blown down by a storm, the annual matches were transferred to another temple in South Yedo. This also was closed in 1805, when a great fight took place there between wrestlers and