Plugs and Postman Pat

[Stephen Cremin]

List member Gavin Rees interviews Miike Takashi in the weekly Guide of
Britain's Guardian newspaper:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4153644,00.html

AUDITION was released on Friday and managed to make Film of the Week in the
Guardian which is extremely rare for an Asian film, particularly for an
Asian film not directed by Wong Kar-wai, Kitano or Ang Lee:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4152739,00.html

While we're at it, here's Pete Tombs article in The Guardian last year which
touches on Miike:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4052532,00.html

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?  Hasn't there been a great tradition of US
cartoon characters with four digits going back at least to Mickey, because
five digits was just too octopussy.  How many digits do Japanese anime
characters have?  Has April Fools Day come early?

Stephen