Dec 31 (soranews24.com) - With another Japanese Christmas in the books, we’ve often talked about the unique holiday custom here of eating fried chicken, particularly that of Kentucky Fried Chicken. However, there is another KFC-related ritual in Japan that even those who live here are surprised exists.
When visiting the famous shrines Higashi-Fushimi Inari in Tokyo and Sumiyoshi Taisha in Osaka in June, one might come across a group of soberly-dressed men and women attending what looks exactly like a standard memorial service. It’s only if the adjacent signboard was properly read that anyone could tell this was in fact “Chicken Thanksgiving†(Chicken Kanshasai).
Chicken Thanksgiving is an annual event where the president of KFC Japan as well as other top brass and key people along the supply chain such as meat processors, sales reps, and seasoning producers, gather in honor of chickens.
J-Town Net spoke with a KFC rep who said that the practice has been going on since 1974 as a way for the company to show respect for the roughly 22 million birds slaughtered each year for Japanese restaurants, and to pray for safe and healthy meat during the following year.
