Some years ago, a Belgian woman named An van Dienderen wondered why so many Japanese tourists visited her hometown of Antwerp, and particularly its cathedral. She learned that they wanted to see the place where the boy Nello and his faithful dog Patrasche died in the story "A Dog of Flanders." This thin novel, written in 1872 by the English author Marie Louise de la Ramee, was virtually unknown in Belgium, so van Dienderen, who has a Ph.D in Comparative Cultural Sciences, started looking into it. She spent five years on her research, which included six trips to Japan.
In an article about van Dienderen's project that appeared two months ago in the Asahi Shimbun, the reporter wrote that the book first became well known in Japan after World War II. Americans distributed copies of it as a way to "give hope to Japanese children." However, the story didn't catch on in a big way until a homegrown animated TV adaptation comprising 52 episodes, "Furandasu no Inu," was broadcast in 1975. The show immediately became a cultural touchstone.
The story was also popular in the United States, where it was made into five different movies. However, as van Dienderen soon found out, the plot known in Japan and the one known in America are different; or, at least, the endings are.