A Dog of Flanders is an 1872 novel by English author Marie Louise de la Ramée published under her pseudonym "Ouida".

In Japan, Korea, Russia, Ukraine and the Philippines, the novel has been a popular children's classic for decades and has been adapted into several Japanese films and anime.

[1] Since the 1980s, the Belgian board of tourism noticed the phenomenon and built two monuments honoring the story to attract East-Asian tourists.

Due to the good care and kindness shown to him by Jehan, the dog recovers its health, and from then on, Nello and Patrasche are inseparable.

Nello is forced to work as a milk seller, because Jehan's unnamed, crooked landlord demands that he pay more rent money or face eviction.

He enters a junior drawing contest in Antwerp, hoping to win the first prize of 200 francs per year; however, the jury selects a different winner.

Only in 1987 did it receive a Dutch translation; this happened after the tale was adapted into a story of the popular comic book series Suske en Wiske.

In 2007, Didier Volckaert and An van Dienderen directed a documentary about the international popularity of the story: Patrasche, A Dog of Flanders – Made in Japan.

The story was used as a plot device in the Suske en Wiske comic book series, namely the album Het Dreigende Dinges (The Threatening Thing) (1985).

[11][2] In 1985 an employee of Antwerp tourism, Jan Corteel, learned of the popularity of A Dog of Flanders in East Asia and attempted to develop a tourist itinerary for it.