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Business Movers

Colonel Santa Claus | Professor Eric Rath on the Globalization of Fast-Food | 2

Business Movers

Wondery

History, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.81.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Professor Eric Rath, author of “Japan’s Cuisines: Food, Place and Identity”, discusses an unlikely-seeming story of globalization: how an American fast-food staple became a Japanese Christmas tradition.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey Prime members, you can listen to BusinessMovers ad free on Amazon Music.

0:05.0

Download the app today. It's October 23rd, 1973, inside a brand new Kentucky Fried Chicken

0:28.8

restaurant in Osaka, Japan.

0:31.3

Loy Weston, the 44-year-old CEO of KFC Japan. Loy Weston, the 44-year-old CEO of KFC Japan, stands beside his colleague and right-hand man,

0:37.8

Takedi Shinn Okawara.

0:40.2

The two men listen solemnly to the chance of a Shinto priest as he delivers a blessing to mark the opening of the gleaming new restaurant.

0:48.0

The long narrow space is filled with KFC staff and several VIP guests from the local area.

0:54.0

A Shinto altar has been erected at the front of the restaurant.

0:58.0

It's adorned with special rice cakes and traditional Japanese foods from the rivers, the mountains, and the sea.

1:04.4

And standing before at all, the chanting priest picks up a large branch of the sacred

1:08.9

sakaki tree. He waves it left and right, over his shoulders and onto his back.

1:15.0

The blessing is meant to encourage the presence of benign spirits and deter evil ones.

1:20.0

Loy looks around, watching the others for the right course of action.

1:25.0

And as the locals begin to bow, Loy follows suit.

1:30.0

Once a ceremony is over, Loy turns to Shinn.

1:33.2

Well, that wasn't something I ever saw growing up in Michigan.

1:36.5

Shinn laughs.

1:37.7

I didn't see it in my time in Boston either,

1:40.1

but it is a very important custom here. Without the blessing, people will find it harder to accept the new business.

1:46.0

Well, she and I am completely on board.

1:48.0

In business, you can take all the help you can get, even from spirits.

1:52.0

And like I've always said, in Japan,

...

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