Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1919 — IAPS DEVOTED TO WRESTLING [ARTICLE]

IAPS DEVOTED TO WRESTLING

Great Crowds Gather to Witness Contests Which to Western Eyes Would Be Tame Exhibition. The wrestling hall covers an aero -and.seats Enter!ng the cifeular hall one snatches' glimpses throtfgir; open doors of greenroom life —wrestlers getting their topknots greased and dressed in most meticulous lasETonT and “geishas" watching the operation with suppressed giggles. Inside tiers of seats slope down to the arena In the middle. The affable editor takes me Into a large empty box commqpding a fine view of the arena and whispers that the box of the crown prince, is the next one to the left. Elsie F. Weil writes in Asia Magazine. A vast impersonal fusing together of thousands of heads, a dizzy hum of countless conversations tiring to unaccustomed foreign ears, a curious impression of somberness produced by the enormous patches of black and mouse-gray and blue that predominate in any large Japanese group. The people are dividing their time between sipping tea. smoking their infinitesimal pipes, eatIng howls of rice and watching the matches. Down in the center Is the arena, covered with a sloping roof like that of a Shinto shrine, gracefully recalling the time when wrestling matches were given in the court of a temple to trample the ground for building and the proceeds of the contest went to repair temples and shrines. Up in the roof is a little shrine to Nomi no Sukune, the patron deity of wrestlers, to whom offerings of rice are made before the matches. . In the first century before Christ the emperor of Japan had an overbearing and insolent officer of the guard, one Keheya. The emperor ordered the strongest men of the realm to wrestle with the heftfilean bully. Noml no Sukune challenged him to a bout and trampled him to death, and received as an Imperial reward a great estate. As a posthumous honor he was delfied a# the first to reduce wrestling to an elaborate science. The four pillars supporting the roof of the arena, each draped with a different color, white, blue, red and black, stand for the four seasons. The purple curtain with white wave pattern draping the eaves signifies passion calming the elements. At each of the four posts sits motionless, like a Buddha, one of the elders, or “toshlyorl,” retired wrestlers who have attained champion rank, and now organise matches, administer finances, take pupils and receive a pension from the wrestling association.