The Japan expedition. Japan and around the world: An account of three visits to the Japanese empire, with sketches of Madeira, St. Helena, cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, Ceylon, Singapore, China, and Loo-ChooSpalding, J. W. (J. Willett)
History
The Japan expedition. Japan and around the world: An account of three visits to the Japanese empire, with sketches of Madeira, St. Helena, cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, Ceylon, Singapore, China, and Loo-Choo
Spalding, J. W. (J. Willett)
Japan -- Description and travel; Voyages and travels
On the same day there was a landing, not for purposes of negotiation,
but for the reception of the presents from the Japanese, which
consisted of lacquered cabinets, desks, some silks, bags of rice, &c.,
not very numerous or at all comparable in use or value to those given
them. On this occasion there was quite a number of officials present,
who were compelled to manifest curiosity, when they saw the beautiful
little locomotive, with its highly-finished rosewood car, complete in
all the customary furniture, driven by a charcoal-fire alone, at a rate
of a mile in three minutes, around a circular track of three hundred
feet. The Americans were entertained with the contests in the ring
of some Japanese athletes. These men were of great stature and much
obesity, but their limbs displayed none of the angular muscularity, of
a Monsieur Paul, lifting his cannon or resisting the draught of horses,
or the pugilistic activity of the American Tom Hyers and Sullivans, who
could no doubt whale them with little difficulty. These men are in the
pay of princes, and have such designations as “Giant of the North,” &c.
Their hair is gathered upon their head, as others of their country,
though not shorn, perhaps to prevent their Samsonian qualities being
affected. In front of their persons, which is otherwise unclothed, they
wear a scarf, with the insignia of the prince they serve upon it. They
commence with an exhibition of their strength, such as throwing with
each hand over the shoulder, or lying on the ground, and somerseting
with large straw-bags containing two hundred pounds of rice each. Then
came the trial of the ring, not more than eight feet in diameter, and
made of rice straw. Before commencing the combatants squatted and
rubbed their knees, as if to assure themselves of their strength, and
then rubbed a little dust under each arm, something like an infuriated
cow, when she throws it on her back, and then with a grunt they
closed, and though the claret was occasionally drawn, and great welts
were raised upon the shoulders, yet there did not appear much of that
belicosity, descriptions of which have graced some of the columns of
the papers of our own country, since the infusion into it of Bill Poole
blackguardism. The effort was rather to get one another out of the
ring, when the effort ends. After being sufficiently amused at this
_intellectual_ display, the commodore and party returned aboard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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