A White Lie Gave Japan KFC for Christmas | Hacker News Reader

A White Lie Gave Japan KFC for Christmas

atlasobscura.com

110 pointswglb26 comments

Japan has a similar story with the "Christmas Cake":

"Christmas cakes...[were] popularized when they began sales at Ginza, the central commercial district in Tokyo. This was during the time when Japan was going through massive waves of Westernization, particularly by the upper elite class. Members of the upper class, who had a strong penchant for Western cultures in general, enjoyed Western style desserts as a delicacy. Thus, being a Western style dessert, Christmas cakes were associated with the idea of Western modernity and social status. It was a major hit when the Christmas cakes were commercialized and became more affordable to the general public."

"The Christmas cakes today are symbolized as a ritual of Christmas celebration; specifically, the act of sharing the cake with family or friends."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_cake#In_other_countr...

And so is so much of cultural interchange.

I think it's wonderful how global trade and connectedness let us patch small holes in our culture.

Japan likes festivals, and Christmas is all wrapped up to be a different enough festival to be foreign and romanticized, and is adapted enough to plug in.

In turn, bits and pieces of Japanese culture are romanticized and find subpopulations in the West to celebrate them, mostly in not-quite-authentic form.

We fool ourselves when we consider ourselves "cultured" from our associations with these things, but we also bring ourselves joy and greater variety in life.

And Korea Put SPAM ( As in the luncheon meat ) in Christmas Gift Box.

[1] http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190122000585

Nothing beats the spam musubi in Hawaii. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_musubi

I did a college abroad program to Japan many years ago, and this was one of the funniest culture shocks I had. I was dumbfounded and astonished as my friends told me that's how they celebrated. I didn't know the story behind it until now, but I thought it was one of the most brilliant marketing moves ever.

Me too! I spent Christmas there many years ago, and every person I talked to asked:

1. Are you going back home for Christmas?

2. No? Oh are you going to get a Christmas cake from KFC?

I was like, Christmas cake? And why KFC specifically? My confusion confused them just as much. Maybe they later thought it was because I was Canadian so it must just be an American thing.

The reverse version of this is pretty sobering: Japanese or Chinese person makes it to Canada, and excitedly goes to the nearest KFC or McDonald's, and gets culture shock from how run-down it is. Especially if they're downtown in a big city.

It makes you want to drive them two hours out to a small-town fast-food restaurant to show them that indeed, a clean and tidy KFC/McDonald's does exist somewhere in America.

KFC in China tastes better than ones in America, probably just my taste.

It has always tasted the same to me, once you'd scraped off the double dollop of mayo they seem to put on the Chinese version of everything.

It even had spring rolls and porridge when I was there.

There’s a good documentary from early 80s about this, The Colonel Comes To Japan. You can find it at your local library or (with dubious copyright status) your local YouTube.

The narrative in the documentary does not straightforwardly square with this article.

Wow! In college my friend found it in an obsolete format (BetaMax?) in the college library. It is a comedy goldmine. ("Banzai!" coughing fit) We still occasionally laugh about it 15 years later. Highly recommended.

This wasn't a lie in my case. My grandma loved KFC and growing up, from the late 60s to the late 80s, KFC was a staple of every Christmas in my family until she passed away.

A big bucket or three of KFC with a bunch of sides isn't all that uncommon a solution to family-gathering dining in certain circles (probably a regional component, too?), so it'd be fair to say they're a pretty popular choice for any holiday save maybe Thanksgiving, I'd think.

It is also true in my case. My extended family still gets KFC every Christmas Eve.

My mother claims this was tradition in her house growing up as well. I think KFC was a little more upscale back then and eating out at all was considered luxurious.

KFC became sketchy over the decades due to corporate penny-pinching. But our local grocery store (Albertson's) makes a better quality version for roughly the same price.

We don't have a KFC Christmas tradition, but it is my guilty pleasure.

We always got Chinese food.

I wasn't able to figure out what the lie was, exactly. Is it in the article?

_With word of the Christmas “Party Barrels” making their way across Japan, the national broadcaster NHK interviewed Okawara about his role in bringing the Colonel to Japan and asked if KFC for Christmas was a common custom overseas. Unable to turn down such a glaring opportunity, the young entrepreneur said yes. “I still regret that, but people liked it because it was something good [they thought came] from the U.S. or European countries,” he told Household Name._

It's there but kind of easy to miss. A TV interviewer asked if KFC for Christmas was a popular tradition in the West, and he replied that it was, despite knowing that it was not.

He could have said, "Yes, poultry is very popular during Christmas in the West." That's probably what a skilled politician would do: lie without lying. If pressed further about KFC itself, he could have said, "KFC is one of many stores which sell poultry in the West, but here in Japan, KFC is the largest store selling Christmas poultry[1]." However, you'd probably have to know the questions in advance to practice your wording. Most politicians ask for the questions in advance as part of the agreement to appear. A chicken sales-person probably doesn't have that luxury.

[1] There was no concept of "Christmas poultry" in Japan outside of his own invention, with decorated packaging etc., so technically he's either true, or the concept was too ambiguous to be objectively false.

You could go one further and just say, "yes, Americans eat birds on special days."

Nice!

Speaking about Christmas in Japan: https://twitter.com/i/status/1072108595137794048

Reply on news.ycombinator.com