No Sayonora for Hato-san

Japan's fiercely competitive big-city dailies fight for circulation with all the costly gadgetry of modern news gathering. Walkie-talkies, high-speed teleprinters, facsimile transmitters and radio-equipped cars are standard reportorial accessories. To cover a big story quickly, Tokyo's Yomiuri Shimbun (circ. 3,900,000) will throw in mobile radiophoto units, a brace of helicopters, one of its six airplanes. Beyond all that, Japanese newspapers' rooftops are equipped with some of the oddest journalistic aids in use anywhere today--flocks of carrier pigeons.

In a land of typhoons and earth quakes, carrier pigeons have proved themselves reliable disaster insurance, able to get through with photographic negatives (up to 20 frames of 35 mm. film in a plastic capsule) where modern communications are blacked out. The pigeons broke into journalism when the great 1923 earthquake turned Tokyo into a shambles, forced editors to rely on a small signal-corps flock. The birds soon earned the title "Hato-san."* As recently as 1959, when a typhoon smashed the industrial city of Nagoya, leaving telephone and wirephoto services dead, the Nagoya Chubu Nippon used its 200 birds to rush negatives from inundated suburbs.

The pigeons have dovetailed nicely into less somber editorial projects. When Crown Prince Akihito sailed on his first overseas tour, Tokyo's Mainichi Shimbun (circ. 3,800,000) sent along a photographer and four birds; one brought a royal picture home from 250 miles at sea for a front-page scoop. Wings beat for Mainichi again when U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall climbed Mount Fuji in 1961. Halfway to the summit, a cameraman released two pigeons which covered the 70 air miles to Tokyo just in time for the evening edition. The Mainichi flock scored its latest coo last October, flying in with pictures of a sailing race.

Pigeons are now too expensive for most papers; three years ago even Tokyo's largest daily, Asahi (circ. 4,100,000), gave away its 300 birds with the announcement: "Time has come to say sayonara to Hato-san." Still, rival Mainichi keeps two trainers on its staff, spends $800 a month on a flock of 150. Yomiuri Shimbun has just completed new concrete dovecotes, plans to expand its present 20-bird flock to at least 100 in time for the Olympic Games that take place next fall, just 15 winged minutes across Tokyo--and smack in the middle of the typhoon season.

* A respectful "Mr. [or Miss] Pigeon."

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