Rice versus Beef

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 15, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 36.

“While they dwarf their trees and shrubbery,” says a writer, “the Japanese have made a race of giant men—a race of wrestlers. These wrestlers often weigh 200, 300, or 400 pounds. At the Imperial Hotel, in Tokyo, they brought a champion wrestler to my room. He was prodigious in size and as fat and fair as a baby. He was a Hercules in strength, but looked like an overgrown cherub of Correggio.

“What do you eat?” I asked.

“Rice—nothing but rice.”

“Why not eat meat?”

“Meat is weakening. Beef is 70 per cent water. Rice is 80 per cent food. I ate lean beefsteak once, and my strength left me. The other man ate rice and threw me down.”

“My courier said, ‘This wrestler is the Sullivan of Japan. No one can throw him.’”

— Omaha Weekly Bee.