Wrestling and Wrestlers: Biographical Sketches of Celebrated Athletes of the Northern Ring; to Which is Added Notes on Bull and Badger BaitingRobinson, Jacob
History
Wrestling and Wrestlers: Biographical Sketches of Celebrated Athletes of the Northern Ring; to Which is Added Notes on Bull and Badger Baiting
Robinson, Jacob
Wrestlers; Wrestling
And this, as detailed, is Japanese wrestling. We can hardly accord it the
term as understood amongst us, and cannot deem it entitled to be classed
with the honoured back-hold pastime of northern England, worthy of eulogy
from the most fastidious-minded. Christopher North would not applaud a Yedo
meeting with the hearty praise he gives to Cumberland and Westmorland
wrestling on the banks of Windermere; neither would Charles Dickens have
gone away from the Ferry so delighted, if the contests he witnessed had
been such as the Japanese delight in. Indeed, our readers generally will,
we imagine, be apt to consider the Eastern wrestling amusement no better
than something akin to our mediæval barbarism. Certainly, nothing in
athletics can be considered more strikingly different, than one of our
quick scientific harmless bouts, as distinguished from the butting or
tupping, the pushing and hauling, the rough tumbling about, and clumsy
finale, in which victory is mainly due to overpowering strength and
weight.
INDIAN WRESTLING.
There is a great similarity in the wrestling in India, and the same pastime
in Japan. This similitude is so close, that after a description of the
latter, there need not be much space devoted to a narrative of the sport in
our great Eastern Empire. The public exhibition of the sport is, in a great
measure, confined to the soldiers of the native regiments of infantry.
Sometimes matches are made and come off which create wide-spread interest,
by men who do not belong the service. So great is the interest taken in the
contests, that they often continue for the best part of a day; and during
the whole time couple after couple enter the ring, and continue to exhibit
their skill. There can be no doubt, the encouragement of such pastimes will
exercise a powerful influence in making them better soldiers, and more
attached to the service.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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