TOKYO'S FLY RAID.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 247, 17 October 1936, Page 22

TOKYO'S FLY RAID.

98 MILLIONS KILLED. PRAYERS FOR VICTIMS. TOKYO. Flycatching day, an annual midsummer event in the Japanese capital, yielded a bag of 98,704,700 insects, if one may trust the extraordinarily minute statistics which are published. One ardent hunter, Mr. Kishio Urase, is credited with no less than 200,000. flias. Like many other features of Japanese life, the fly hunt is sponsored by the Metropolitan Police Board. The open sanitation and humid climate of Tokyo encourages the breeding of flies, mosquitoes and many other pests; indeed, Japan is supposed to possess the richest and most varied insect life of any country in the world. Police statisticians estimate that all the flies - destroyed during the annual raid would fill 152 rice sacks, and, if laid end to end on a railway track, would extend for a distance of GOO miles. A quaint aftermath of the yearly compaigns to destroy rats, mice, insects and other harmful animals is the holding 0 f a Buddhist service .for the souls of 'the victims of these sanitary measures.