Plugs and Postman Pat

[Aaron Gerow]

>A few pages before Gavin's review in The Guide is an article on yakuza which
>I can't find a link for.  Well, article leads with a statement along the
>lines that Postman Pat and Bob the Builder cartoons had to be modified in
>Japan because they both lacked digits on their hands!  Sounded completely
>made-up to me, until reading the rest of the article which proved well
>researched: for example, the writer certainly knows who Guts Ishimatsu is. 
>Is there any truth to this?

Sorry about not getting back to people earlier on this VERY pressing 
issue, but there is no truth to this with regard to Postman Pat.  My son 
is a Pat fan and he watches both the Japanese dubbed version broadcast 
here and has a store-bought videotape version marketed in the US.  I feel 
compelled to report that Pat has four digits on each hand in each of the 
versions.  (This is the same number of digits in a UK made Pat cartoon 
book my son owns.)

Don't know about Bob the Builder, but I would imagine no one would go to 
the expense of doing this, especially when Tezuka's characters always had 
questionable digit numbers.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171