Happily there was nothing semi-official about the wrestling to which we were invited later in the day.  A special little platform had been put up for us.  The ring was made on rice chaff and earth.  The wrestlers squatted in two parties at opposite sides of the ring.  They did not wear the straw girdles of the professionals.  Each man had a wisp of cotton cloth tied round his waist and between his legs.  One of the best things about the wrestling was the formal introduction of the competitors.  A weazened little man with a tucked-up cotton kimono and bare legs, but with the address and dignity of a “No” player, proclaimed the names and styles—­it seems that the wrestlers have a fancy to be known by the names of mountains and rivers—­in a fashion which recalled the tournament.  There was also another personage, with a Dan Leno-like face and an extraordinary gift of contorting his legs, who played the buffoon, and gyrated round the dignified M.C., who remained unmoved while the audience laughed.  It was evidently the right thing for the prizes—­they were awarded at the end of each bout—­to be presented as comically as possible; and some of the Shakespearean humours which appealed so powerfully to the groundlings at the Globe were enacted as if neither space nor time intervened between us and the Elizabethans.

The bouts were not so fast as professional wrestlers are accustomed to, but they were none the less exciting.  The result was invariably in some doubt and often entirely unexpected.  The usual rule was that he who threw his man twice was the winner.  In some events, immediately a wrestler had been thrown, a succession of other contestants rushed at the victor, one after the other, without allowing him time even to straighten his back.  Some of the competitors were poorly developed but the lankiest and skinniest were often excellent wrestlers.  At an interval in the wrestling the committee flung hard peaches to wrestlers and spectators.  I wanted to make some little acknowledgment of the kindness of the young men’s association in providing us with our little platform, and it was suggested that autographed fans at about a penny three-farthings apiece for about forty wrestlers would be acceptable.  This gift was announced on a long streamer.  The funny man of the ring also made a speech of welcome.  I may add that the young men’s association had fitted up on the way to the scene of the wrestling a number of special lanterns which bore efforts in English by a student home for the holidays.

I was told that the people of the village were “honest, independent and earnest,” and I am disposed to think that this may be true of most of them.  As to honesty, we had the satisfaction of living without any thought of dorobo (robbers).  It is a great comfort to be able at night to leave open most of the shoji and not to have to pull out the amado (wooden shutters) from their case.  The nature of our possessions was well known not only in the village but throughout the district, for there was seldom a day on which a knot of grown-ups or children did not come to peer into our rooms.  The inspection was accompanied by many polite bows and friendly smiles.  On a festival day the crowd occasionally reached about fifty.