its merits, she said, after consideration, that
there was much to be said for the plan. "In Japan," she declared, "you
cannot know a husband's character until you are married. On the whole,
I wish I had been a man." In order to catch our train we had to leave
this inn the moment our meal was finished, although the widow quoted
to us the adage, "Rest after a meal even if your parents are dead."

On a morning in May I went into the country to visit a friend who was
taking a holiday in a ramshackle inn 4,000 ft. up Mount Akagi. I
continually heard the note of the _kakko_ (cuckoo). On the higher
parts of the mountain there were azaleas at every yard, some quite
small but others 12 or even 15 ft. high. Many had been grazed by
cattle. Big cryptomeria were plentiful part of the way up, but at the
top there were no trees but diminutive oaks, birches and pines,
stunted and lichen covered, the topmost branches broken off by the
terrific blasts which from time to time sweep along the top of the
extinct volcano.

One of the products of rural Japan is the wrestler. _Sumo_, which is
going on in every school and college of the country, exhibits its
perfect flower twice a year in the January and May ten-days-long
tournaments in the capital. The immense rotunda of the wrestlers'
association suggests a rather rickety Albert Hall and holds 13,000
people.[216] On the day I went in I paid 2 yen and had only standing
room. Everybody knows the more than Herculean proportions of the
wrestlers in comparison with the rest of their countrymen. The
rigorous training, Gargantuan feeding and somewhat severe discipline
of the wrestlers enable them to grow beyond the average stature and to
a girth, protected by enormously developed abdominal muscles, which
reinforces strength with great weight.[217]

I had often the opportunity at a railway station or in a train to
witness the easy carriage and magnificent pride of these massive,
good-tempered men. There is not in the world, probably, a more
remarkable illustration than they afford of what superior physical
training and superior feeding can do. At first sight, indeed, these
gigantic creatures seem to belong to a different race. It is no wonder
that they should be so commonly proteges of the rich and
distinguished. When an eminent wrestler retired in the year in which I
first saw a good wrestling bout the ceremony of cutting his hair--for,
like Samson, the wrestler wears his hair long--was performe