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In this new bimonthly series, Patrick Parr looks at how famous brands got their start in Japan. Parr previously wrote the “Japan Yesterday” series chronicling past historic visits to Japan by world-famous people.
As early as January 1967, there were rumblings in American newspapers that Kentucky Fried Chicken would soon be opening stores in Japan. In October 1969, KFC president John Y. Brown Jr. announced that the fast-food chain had entered a "15-year joint venture agreement" with Mitsubishi. All it took were years of research and Mitsubishi representatives flying to the U.S. to speak directly to Colonel Harland D. Sanders to convince him.
This was it.
KFC would soon be the first American fast-food restaurant in Japan. But Col. Sanders, nearing 80, couldn’t be the constant self-promoter that he was in the U.S.
That role fell to 40-year-old Loy Weston, a 5’6’’ IBM typewriter-selling tornado. Weston left IBM after working for 16 years in their sales and product development department. His outgoing personality — on full display in the first few seconds of the 1981 documentary below — and willingness to understand Japanese business culture despite never learning Japanese—helped establish KFC’s presence in Japan.
It wouldn’t be easy, but having Mitsubishi on your side to open doors meant a much higher percentage chance for success.
“Even though Mitsubishi didn’t do a lot for us in the beginning in terms of involvement,” Weston told interviewer George Faas in 1984 for the Journal of Japanese Trade & Industry, “they gave us their name… If Mitsubishi’s got their thumbprint on it, the real estate people, the supermarkets or whoever you’re dealing with tend to believe you’re going to hang around.”
Before they could hang around, however, they needed to test their product. Would the Japanese consumer even like their mashed potatoes and gravy?
Expo ’70
Weston’s first market-entry responsibility was setting up a small stand at the 1970 Osaka World Expo, which ran from mid-March to September. Weston and KFC had been invited by Royal Foods president and the expo's American Park organizer Kyoichi Egashira. The acceleration of KFC’s rollout depended on how well this location — about a quarter of the size of a regular store in the U.S. — did with expo visitors.
It wasn’t exactly the best way to gauge customer approval, given the company’s desire to fully enter the Japanese market. Expo ’70 in Osaka was a global event, bringing visitors from around the world. In this way, KFC’s record sales at their exposition stand — roughly $100,000 a month — could never accurately reflect its actual cultural acceptance.
For example, in April 1970, the cruise ship SS President Cleveland took a passenger survey after making the trip to the expo. Almost all on board were Americans, and when asked where the best place to eat was at the expo out of the thousand restaurant stands in the park, 46% said KFC.
Still, KFC workers at the exposition kept an eye on how Japanese customers went about eating their combo meal. KFC's technical director at the expo, Byron Adams, a native of Nashville, Tennessee, watched with curiosity as one female customer, upon opening her container, “kept eyeing the roll enclosed, but she never ate it. When it was the last remaining item in the box, she stared at it for a while, full of indecision apparently as to what to do with it. Finally she wrapped it up in a napkin and put it gingerly in her purse.” In Japan, Adams most likely noted, nothing goes to waste.
Through taste test research and observation, Weston also noticed that most Japanese customers did not enjoy their mashed potatoes and gravy.
“We remedied that easily enough by substituting french fries, which they really like.” Other ingredient tweaks followed, such as cutting in half “the sugar content of our salads…” to decrease the sweetness.
The stand at the fair imported their chickens mostly from the state of Georgia, a cost-heavy move that ended soon after hearing from Japanese customs about concerns that the chicken skin could be contaminated. This was a quick pivot, since Mitsubishi already had a presence in the chicken and chicken feed industry, so the inevitable shift toward using Japanese chickens may have been desired from the start.
The stand, however, was deemed a success by all involved, both monetarily and as a learning experience. But once the expo ended in mid-September 1970, a new challenge awaited — location.
A confusing suburban restaurant
Less than two months after the end of the Osaka Expo, on Nov. 21, 1970, the first full-sized KFC restaurant in Japan opened in — of all places — Nagoya. According to Nikkei Asia writer Yo Tanaka, it was located "on a suburban road as instructed" by KFC higher-ups.
Opening in Nagoya had been pushed by Weston, following “the home office dictum that we must build freestanding U.S.-sized units.”
“At one point, I leveraged it up to $8,000,000, and if KFC Japan hadn’t worked, I’d be in jail now. That’s a fact.” —Loy Weston
Weston chose the Nagoya/Osaka area for the first three KFC stores because it was at least somewhat close to the expo.
“The first three Japanese shopping centers had been built in that area,” he wrote in a now deleted Hawaii Reporter article. “I thought we could put our stores in the parking lots of these shopping centers. In short, we bombed.”
In a 2018 Business Insider podcast, manager Takeshi “Shin” Okawara, who’d chosen a KFC career after being inspired by the story of Colonel Sanders, expressed his early frustrations, explaining that after learning how to cook the chicken the KFC way, he “couldn’t sell it.”
Okawara pointed to several problems. “…first of all, all the sign[s] [were] written in English and the roof was painted [in] red and white stripes. Actually, [the customers didn’t know] what the hell [we’re] selling. They[’d] come in to [the store and say]… “Is this a barber?” Or, “[are you] selling chocolate?” That sort of [thing].”
Suffering from a lack of customers, both Okawara (later becoming the president of KFC Japan) and Weston went into damage control. Mitsubishi, annoyed by the lack of mutual understanding on the U.S. side, started to consider maneuvering their way out of the deal
From Weston’s perspective, it was all about the money. They needed capital to keep going and open other stores. “We had no money for advertising, so we couldn’t even hire an agency,” Weston recalled back in 1984. “I could only leverage our $200,000 paid-in capital so far (50% from KFC and 50% from Mitsubishi). At one point, I leveraged it up to $8,000,000, and if KFC Japan hadn’t worked, I’d be in jail now. That’s a fact.”
And he did it all via translators. “I never learned to speak Japanese well,” he said in the 1984 interview. “That’s one thing I did right. The Japanese might resent you if you’re fluent.”
As Weston worked on dragging KFC out of the red, Okawara created stabler domestic partnerships, while saving on rent money by sleeping on flour sacks in the back of his store. Around 1971, with Mitsubishi being one foot out the door, Okawara managed to negotiate contracts with two other chicken suppliers — Sumitomo and Marubeni — keeping Mitsubishi from abandoning the venture.
Still, without throngs of customers and an advertising budget, it appeared KFC was, well, cooked. Throw in the ever-increasing list of Western fast-food competition flooding Japan in the early 1970s — Dairy Queen, McDonald's, Wimpy’s, A&W — and it was safe to say that not many were betting on the colonel.
Better locations and Santa
The next stores opened in more urban, walk-heavy places. When its fifth store in Aoyama opened in mid-1971, younger crowds started coming in to order, eager to experience more Western-centric food. And, as has been written about prolifically, KFC’s Kentucky-for-Christmas ad campaign started in March 1974, its origins debatable.
The Okawara version is that he received an order from a nun in those early sales-doldrum days at his Nagoya restaurant. She asked him to dress up as Santa for the children at a nearby Catholic school, and he did, carrying a bucket while singing a made-up jingle he called “Kentucky Christmas.”
Seeing the sentimental marketing potential, Okawara started promoting Christmas buckets, later claiming in an early 1970s NHK interview that eating chicken was an American Christmas tradition. It technically isn’t, as he knew, with turkey being the preferred meat, followed by ham and possibly duck — although chicken is often a worthy and more affordable substitute.
So, with better locations, rising demand among the Japanese public for imported Western restaurant franchises, Weston’s flair for attracting attention and an annual Christmas plug, KFC found its place in Japan. As of April 2023, there are now 1,172 stores across Japan.
But to Weston, making it in Japan as a businessman or as a company takes patience.
“In Japan,” wrote Weston in a 2005 memoir series for the Hawaii Reporter, “patience has a whole new meaning. Patience is the art of living with the impossible.”
Random fact
KFC founder Colonel Harland Sanders, or Kahneru Oji-san, visited Japan three times in the 1970s. In a 2001 Lexington-Herald Leader article, he is reported by journalist James Ritchie as having “loved Japan.”
When Col. Sanders bit into his first piece of KFC chicken at a store in Japan, his reaction was both a compliment to Japan and a sign of his dissatisfaction with the substandard quality of KFC in America: “Why do I have to come to Japan to get the real Kentucky Fried Chicken?”
Sanders later sued KFC in the United States and once said that his original gravy recipe had been turned into “pure wallpaper paste.” He passed away in 1980 at the age of 90.
Our next “When They Opened in Japan” will feature Coca-Cola's appearance in the Japanese market in 1957.
Patrick Parr’s second book, One Week in America: The 1968 Notre Dame Literary Festival and a Changing Nation, was released in March 2021 and is available through Amazon, Kinokuniya and Kobo. His previous book is The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age, now available in paperback. He teaches at Lakeland University Japan’s campus in Ryogoku.
© Japan Today
21 Comments
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Peter Neil
And no bland, tough breast meat in Japan. Still don’t see the fascination with it in the US. It’s all about the volume of food. Here, have this big fried shoe.
Japan still tastes like the original version.
rcch
I love(!) fried chicken and I love KFC…; geez, I loved this. Thank you.
..
[ “ Our next “When They Opened in Japan” will feature Coca-Cola's appearance in the Japanese market in 1957. “ ]
What a classic…; … looking forward to it.
garypen
No. Japan KFC is pretty terrible, too. The breasts are just as dry and tasteless. Plus, the coating is even oilier here than in the US. At least, at the branches in my area.
I much prefer chicken from a depachika stall or one of the many Korean chicken joints, like bbq Olive Chicken. Night and day.
(In the US, Popeye's is a much better choice than KFC for fast food chicken.)
Michael Machida
The cost for KFC for their high calorie chicken does not make any sense to me. Maybe they can try another name change to try to look cool and new.
Speed
Awesome article! This is what I like to see. Well done, JT. (This isn't something I write very often.) I loved that second video and seeing old Tokyo from when I was young.
I remember this period very well. The custom of working for one company for your whole life thus the company being able to invest and depend on that person seems like something from so long ago.
The attention to detail and intense training on service, quality, and professionalism was something that really made me feel back then that there was no way Japan wasn't going to win economically and that they were the future - the 21st century.
The insane rate of growth and optimism back in the 60s, 70s and 80s was so visible and apparent, I'm sure many here who came only the last couple of decades will never really be able to fathom what it felt like.
I didn't eat at my first Japanese KFC here until '79 but I remember how much it tasted like the chicken in the US. Thank you also for clearing up why KFC doesn't have those delicious mash potato and gravy by posting this video! I really enjoyed this article.
rcch
Excuse me,
why would someone downvote my post? If you don’t like KFC, that’s fine, you don’t need to upvote me… but you also don’t need to downvote me. I love to eat, KFC or not, I love food / and this was an interesting article so why would you downvote me.
dan
KFC .... unhealthy muck.
Peter Neil
They don't sell breasts at KFC in Japan. Only white meat is backs, not breasts.
K3PO
Loy Western's 2IC Takeshi “Shin” Okawara was a young man who challenged his leader and really shaped KFC's launch to fit within Japan's tastes. Great documentary.
Peter Neil
It's white meat, but backs, not breasts.
theResident
Japanese KFC tastes so much better than anywhere else in the world. Yes, Sure, its high in Calories but once in a while is not going to klll you. The boneless pieces (whether they breasts or backs) when they are hot and fresh are great. We order 50 at a time for the desk sometimes.
garypen
Excuuuuse me. Their white meat backs are just as dry and tasteless as the breasts from KFC US. ¯(ツ)/¯
Liam Roberts
I was a butcher for 13 years and also worked at kfc cooking for 4-5 years,, so I think I’m a bit qualified to say the piece of chicken you get with the bit of gristle in the middle is the breast..You get 5 pieces of chicken, thigh, leg, wing breast and a piece that incorporates the back and side and abit of the breast .I don’t know what someone here is eating but the regular kfc chicken is the same all around the world
Peter Neil
garypenToday 05:14 pm JST
“Excuuuuse me. Their white meat backs are just as dry and tasteless as the breasts from KFC US”
I agree. That’s why I don’t like them either.
starpunk
KFC is the greatest fried chicken in the world, even if it is greasy. You can soak the grease off with a napkin. Those 11 herbs and spices make this franchise yet another one of America's Great Cultural Exports. Even Iran, who hates the 'Great Satan' so much has KFC.
Anthony Padgett
Here's a great video documentary from 1981 about Weston and KFC in Japan:
https://youtu.be/uwwmKcFVji8
1glenn
It is interesting to watch what foods are popular around the world. From the West to the East, fried chicken and pizza. From the East to the West, Sushi, ramen, sake,.......
I do find it fascinating that pizza is popular around the world.
Toshiaki Amari
It’s weird to see how brands have such big impact on Japanese culture…. Most of which never even planned it. KFC on Christmas, Kit-Kat during exams? cool.