It was a shouting, laughing, good-natured crowd, gay with the colors of Japanese girls’ sashed kimonos mingling with the black of more sedate native costumes, and with the trim modern uniforms of Japan’s host of young army flyers.
In the first wild rush, the plucky American aviator was fairly mobbed. The shouting, howling throng, wild with joy and excitement, hauled him clear of his plane. Everyone wanted to shake his hand, American fashion, or even just touch the garments of this one that had flown the skies. Trim, sturdy members of the imperial air force, got to him, lifted him upon their khaki shoulders. Thus he was borne through the streets of old, old Tokio where the automobile and the jinrikisha mingled as unconcernedly as did the old-time temples and tea shops mingle with eight-story skyscrapers and picture theaters.
Behind him, edging the landing field, rose a fine modern building. Hal Dane waved an inquiring hand at it.
“Tokio Asahi!” came the surprising answer that was shouted from many throats.
Hal nodded his head as if he understood, but puzzlement seethed in his brain. What did this queer shout mean that greeted him everywhere, even met him in the air before landing?
As the triumphal procession made its way down the street, newsboys, carrying bundles of papers, tore through the swarming crowds, ringing bells, flying small flags, and shouting loudly as they waved these “extras” just off the press.
Their shout floated back to Hal with an irritatingly familiar refrain, “Tokio Asahi! Tokio Asahi!”
And suddenly, from his perch on men’s shoulders, that lifted him hero-wise above the crowd—Hal Dane burst into boyish laughter. He had it, that “Tokio Asahi,”—it was the name of Japan’s greatest newspaper—the newspaper with over a million circulation, and with a most modern of modern air mail deliveries. That was evidently the Asahi’s own great landing field he had arrived above, so naturally it was the name Asahi that had been radioed up to him.
Well, the Asahi was certainly an up and coming publication. As young Dane peered down from his place at the second army of newsboys speeding with flag and bell advertisement through the mob, he saw with astonishment that his own picture already smudgily adorned these latest extras. And men and women, gone wild over this young conqueror of the skies, were scrambling for these pictures.
At last the efficient Tokio police rescued Hal Dane from the rough-and-tumble admiration of the street crowds. Somehow they got him free and rushed him into a building. And here Hal found himself shaking hands with Charles MacVeagh, American Ambassador to Japan. Here he met Baron Giichi Tanaka, Premier of Japan; Suzuki, the Home Minister; Mitsuchi, head of Finance Department, and other notable figures of the Japanese capital,—statesmen whose names were known all over the world.