A comparison of amusingness for Japanese children and senior citizens of The Story of Little Black Sambo in the traditional version and a nonracist version

Japanese versions of The Story of Little Black Sambo (LBS) were perceived to have racist characterizations and were withdrawn from the Japanese market in 1988. A revised version of LBS was prepared that contained no words or pictures related to racism and was compared with a version of LBS published by Iwanami Publishing Co. in terms of amusingness. Fifty-four kindergarteners, aged 4 to 5 years old, and 43 senior citizens, 78.9 years of age on average, were read a picture book popular in Japan, followed by either the revised or the Iwanami version of LBS and then asked to judge which of the 2 stories was more amusing. The results showed equal levels of amusingness between the Iwanami and the revised versions of LBS in both age groups.