The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

While contemplating these substantial evidences of Japanese generosity, the attention of all was suddenly riveted upon twenty-five monstrous fellows who tramped down the beach like so many huge elephants. They were professional wrestlers and formed part of the retinue of the princes, who kept them for their private amusement and for public entertainment. They were enormously tall, and tremendously heavy. Their scant costume, which was merely a colored cloth about the loins, adorned with fringes and emblazoned with the armorial bearings of the prince to whom each belonged, revealed their gigantic proportions in all the bloated fulness of fat and extent of muscle.

Two or three of these huge monsters were the most famous wrestlers in Japan and ranked as the champion Tom Cribbs and Sayers of the country. Koyanagi, the reputed bully of the capital, was one of them, and paraded himself with the conscious pride of superior size and strength. He was especially brought to the Commodore that he might examine his massive form. The commissioners insisted that the monstrous fellow should be minutely inspected, that the hardness of his well-rounded muscle should be felt, and that the fatness of his cushioned frame should be tested by the touch. The Commodore accordingly attempted to grasp his arm, which he found as solid as it was huge, and then passed his hand over the monstrous neck, which fell in folds of massive flesh, like the dewlap of a prize ox. As some surprise was naturally expressed at this wondrous exhibition of animal development the monster himself gave a grunt expressive of his flattered vanity.

They were so enormously big that they appeared to have lost their distinctive features, and seemed to be only twenty-five masses of fat. Their eyes were barely visible through a long perspective of socket, the prominence of their noses was lost in the puffiness of their bloated cheeks, and their heads were set almost directly on their bodies with merely folds of flesh where the neck and chin are usually found. Their great size, however, was more owing to development of muscle than to deposition of fat; for, although they were evidently well fed, they were not less well exercised, and capable of great feats of strength.

As a preliminary exhibition of the power of these men, the princes set them to removing the sacks of rice to a convenient place on the shore for shipping. Each of the sacks weighed not less than one hundred twenty-five pounds, and there were only two of the wrestlers who did not carry each two sacks at a time. They bore the sacks on the right shoulder, lifting the first from the ground and adjusting it without help, but obtaining aid for the raising of the second. One man carried a sack suspended by his teeth, and another, taking one in his arms, turned repeated somersaults as he held it, apparently with as much ease as if his weight of flesh had been only so much gossamer and his load a feather.

After this preliminary display, the commissioners proposed that the Commodore and his party should retire to the treaty-house, where they would have an opportunity of seeing the wrestlers exhibit their professional feats. From the brutal performance of these wrestlers, the Americans turned with pride to the exhibition—to which the Japanese commissioners were now in their turn invited—of the telegraph and the railroad. It was a happy contrast, which a higher civilization presented, to the disgusting display on the part of the Japanese officials. In place of the show of brute animal force there was a triumphant revelation, to a partially enlightened people, of the success of science and enterprise.

The Japanese took great delight in seeing the rapid movement of the Liliputian locomotive; and one of the scribes of the commissioners took his seat upon the car, while the engineer stood upon the tender, feeding the furnace with one hand, and directing the diminutive engine with the other. Crowds of the Japanese gathered round and looked on the repeated circlings of the train with unabated pleasure and surprise, unable to repress a shout of delight at each blast of the steam-whistle. The telegraph, with its wonders, though before witnessed, still created renewed interest, and all the beholders were unceasing in their expressions of curiosity and astonishment. The agricultural instruments having been explained to the commissioners by Doctor Morrow, a formal delivery of the telegraph, the railway, and other articles, which made up the list of American presents, ensued.