Once I took refuge in a wrestling-match. I found a great pagoda-like, circus-like tent made of bamboo with matting for a roof. Outside long streamers of various colors floated from the tops of long poles. High above and on a little platform supported by four bamboos a man was beating a drum. He had started beating that drum at daybreak. About the entrance and around the big, fragile structure was the same crowd of men and boys that you would find at an American circus. To get in I paid two yen. Had my skin been yellow and my eyes slant I would have dropped but one. The arena inside was amphitheatrical in shape with three broad tiers of benches on which squatted the spectators. In the centre and under a bamboo roof was a hummock of dirt about two feet high. Four pillars swathed with red and blue supported this roof, and from each pillar was stretched a streamer from which dangled little banners covered with Chinese ideographs. A ring some twelve feet in diameter was dug into the dirt hummock and in the centre of this ring were two huge fat men, stark naked except for a breech-clout. As I came in, they rose and took hold. To the Saxon it looked at first glance like two fat ladies simply trying to push each other out of the ring, and I came near laughing aloud. Before I had approached ten steps one of the two fat men touched one foot outside of the ring. He had lost and the bout was over. Now two more came walking in with great dignity. They mounted the arena and turned their backs upon each other. Then each stretched out his right leg with his right hand on the knee, raised it high in the air and brought it down on the earth with a mighty stamp. The same performance with the left leg, and then they strained downward until their buttocks almost touched the earth. Turning, they squatted on their heels opposite each other at the edge of the ring, and each man slapped his hands together gently, stretched them out at full length and turned the palms over. This was a salute--the Japanese equivalent of the Saxon pugilist's handshake. Each walked then to one of the posts from which hung a little box of salt, and his second handed him there water in a _sake_ cup. He rinsed his mouth, spurted the water out, took a pinch of salt and threw it into the ring. One of them stooped and plucked a few blades of grass from the sod and threw them also into the ring. Both these acts were meant to drive the spirits of evil away, and it was all so serious that I was aroused at once. Four times they squatted like two huge game-cocks, and four times they got up slowly, strolled leisurely to the salt-box and the _sake_ cup. At last they got together, and there was a mighty tussle, and to my astonishment, one of those giants threw the other over his head and landed him some eight feet outside the ring. Apparently there was more in it than was evident to the casual eye, and it was very serious business indeed. The fact is, wrestling is an