Nose Out of Joint

Italian intellectuals were up in arms. Distinguished essayists wrote diatribes against "inflexible technocracy." Some even suggested banning Honda motorcycles from the Apennine peninsula as a way of exacting revenge for sullied national honor. The cause of all the indignation was what Italians saw as an outrageous cultural slight. It came from Japan, of all places, and was aimed at one of the most beloved of 19th century Italians: the impish little wooden marionette Pinocchio.

Heavens to Geppetto! Carlo Collodi's 1883 children's classic, The Adventures of Pinocchio, had incurred the wrath of citizens in the Japanese city of Nagoya. Calling themselves Pinokio Wo Arau Kai (Association to Wash Pinocchio), they demanded recall of 19 Japanese editions of the book available in stores and libraries. Their argument: Pinocchio stresses "discrimination against disabled unfortunates" and must not "be read by our children."

Shiftless Schemers. The Japanese bear no grudge against Pinocchio himself, who in Collodi's tale is afflicted with disabilities enough before achieving his dream of becoming a flesh-and-blood boy. Their objections focus on the book's two ne'er-do-wells, the Fox and the Cat, shiftless schemers posing as mendicants who are lame (the Fox) and blind (the Cat), while merrily fleecing the gullible young puppet. By the end of the tale, the Cat is truly sightless and minus a paw, while the Fox does not fare too well either--he ends up thin, almost hairless and without a tail.

The Japanese have traditionally regarded open comment on physical infirmities as bad manners. Accordingly, they have been backing away for some time from such offensive terminology as mekura no kojiki (blind beggar) and bik-ko no kojiki (lame beggar) in their translations of the Italian tale. Nowadays the two villains are usually referred to in Japanese translations as "a cat with bad eyesight" and "a fox with weak legs."

Yasuo Shikata, 36, leader of the Wash Pinocchio group, feels that the cleaning up has not gone far enough. He notes that at least one uneuphemized edition of Pinocchio, printed in 1967, is still on sale. He complains that illustrations of the cat wearing opaque eyeglasses and the fox struggling along on a crutch "give the impression of the abjectness of disability and stress discrimination against disabled unfortunates." The group's campaign has drawn a public apology for "thoughtlessness" from the major Japanese publisher of the children's classic, along with promises to withdraw at least four editions.

Japanese honor may be partially satisfied, but some Italians see the affair as an assault on their traditional humanism. Writing in Milan's Corriere della Sera, Essayist Luigi Compagnone jestingly defended the Cat and the Fox as "two small-time cheats, emeritus champions of the art of getting by," a talent that he says is attributed to the people of southern Italy. Japan, he added, is "a superindustrialized country, where the myths of superproduction have inserted themselves in the daily reality to the point of spasm. It does not know or accept anything but the frightening morality of integral efficiency, which is the squalid religion of modern times."

Alas, that religion may be spreading. Umberto Bosco, a noted Rome University professor of literature, added his voice to the defense of Pinocchio. He also recalled unhappily that in a TV documentary on Dante, squeamish Italian officials asked him not to quote the poet's description of Neapolitan King Charles II--"the cripple of Jerusalem."

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