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Source: is NSFW (google it yourself sangaku complex)
Fat Princess, a charmingly bloody multiplayer PS3 capture the princess game, was set to be belatedly released in Japan as Pocchari Princess, but that release has been cancelled and delayed indefinitely allegedly due to complaints over the fact that characters depicted only have four fingers.
Some explanation is in order the issue derives from claims of discrimination by the hypersensitive descendents of Japans burakumin caste. In the Edo period, these were families forced to live as untouchables in special villages and ghettos as they worked in professions, such as tanning or undertaking, considered unclean in Shinto.
Such peoples were subjected to heavy legal and social discrimination, and although the caste was abolished in 1871 as part of the Meiji reforms, the discrimination lingers on to this day, with some people, predominantly in the Kansai region, still attempting to ensure their families do not marry the descendents of the burakumin by way of clandestine and illegal ancestry checks.
The burakumin reaction against this has seen the issue given virtual taboo status, along the same lines as racism in the west. The same reaction has also seen plenty of anti-discriminatory complaints and legal activity on their part, and it is here that the matter intersects with Fat Princess of all things.
Yotsu, four, is supposedly used by some blighted individuals as a discriminatory term for burakumin, and this has led to excessively sensitive burakumin activists attacking what they consider discriminatory usage of the number four a variety of anime and manga have been forced to redraw characters to have five fingers based on such complaints:
Most Japanese likely have no idea this taboo even exists, and it is magnificently obvious that developers Titan Studios, situated in the USA, could never have intended this as an attack on burakumin.
Still, the demands of political correctness being what they are, the game has had its imminent November release indefinitely delayed whilst replacement art is secured.
Source: is NSFW (google it yourself sangaku complex)
