“I love chickens, especially grilled,” Mrs. T told me. “As you know, Japanese eat chicken at Xmas instead of turkey”. Indeed they do. Whilst married couples, dating lovers or groups of singles go out for a posh meal on Christmas Eve, extraordinary quantities of KFC fuel the Japanese family Christmas feast at home with the kids.

THE COLONEL COMETH

In 1970, American fast-food chains were eyeing Asia as a new market. Kentucky Fried Chicken teamed up with trading company Mitsubishi Corporation to open its trial fried chicken restaurant at the Nagoya Expo, which was a huge success. This was followed by the first store in a Nagoya suburb, then Osaka and Kobe, with a menu tweaked to Japanese tastes.

The Japanese could not deal with instant mashed potatoes and gloopy gravy, so that was removed from the menu and replaced with fries – an easy and very saleable side dish. The coleslaw was too sweet so a version was made with less sugar, and a few additions were made to the menu: smoked chicken, fish ‘n’ chips and yogurt.

The restaurants started to spread across the country. Although the tweaked menu differs a lot from what you’d find in Louisville, the fried chicken is identical. Well, it’s supposed to be, but personally I think it’s better in Japan than most locations I’ve sampled, including the Wan Chai grease bomb version.

A few KFC stores in Japan also sell draft Kirin beer, with occasional “all-you-can-drink” deals which I enthusiastically support when I’m in town. There’s nothing like an ice cold beer while waiting for your pre-ordered Christmas bucket with fries and coleslaw.

The KFC Christmas is thought by many to have its roots in an inspirational marketing idea, prompted by homesick foreigners that were missing turkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas, which led to the yuletide event we see today, with KFC running annual TV ads as a series. I wouldn’t recommend binge watching those commercials as you would a Korean drama – the Japanese tune they use is more of an earworm than Mariah Carey’s holiday tune – but they are on YouTube for those who aren’t chicken.

CHICKEN AND BEER TIME

The chicken and beer combination “chimaek” – not to be confused with beer-can-chicken, a craze I’m thinking of kicking off in Japan – was fuelled by its appearance on, you guessed it, a Korean drama.

In My Love From the Star, Gianna Jun’s pretty character was dating an equally good-looking extraterrestrial alien, and delivered the line in a very plausible story: “A snowy day is just perfect for our chimaek time!” Viewers drooled in front of the box and a fried chicken restaurant explosion swept through South Korea and China, delivering fried chicken and beer, and drawing in many an entrepreneurial retiree’s savings along the way.

Today, the craze has fizzled, as have many of the restaurants. And many of the retirees unfortunately went bust, though you can still find restaurants around, including a few clinging on in Hong Kong.

Will South Korea displace Japan as Asia’s cultural superpower?

Unlike the Koreans, the Japanese were historically not meat eaters. Back in the 1930s they ate about 28 grams each on average, or 10kg a year. But access to cheap imported meats with successive trade deals has changed diets and tastes. Now the Japanese eat about 40kg of meat each per year. That’s far short of Americans’ 100kg per person, but it’s fair to say they’re enthusiastic newcomers.

As the Chinese and South Koreans started taking the lion’s share of the redistributed catch, chicken has taken the place of fish in Japanese tummies. Consumption of meat overtook fish in 2012 and growth in chicken consumption has since surpassed beef and pork.

With an ageing population, and chicken’s easy digestibility, it’s no surprise that chicken farming is a growing business. And of course, with all those chickens come many eggs. To deal with that, Japan has developed an export market for mayonnaise – something they drizzle on everything from scrambled eggs and raw vegetables to pizza – as well as fried chicken. No less than 10 per cent of Japan’s eggs end up in mayo, which is now an easy-to-find premium product on supermarket shelves around the world.

The most popular brand is Kewpie which comes in a handy squeezy bottle. The mountain of eggshells is recycled into calcium-rich animal feed additives.

Thailand is the eighth largest producer of chicken globally, and the bulk of its exports go to Japan. Like other agricultural enterprises during the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been hit with labour shortages of migrant workers from Myanmar and Cambodia, as well as the logistical headaches that impacted everyone everywhere.

With the border closures, processing plants – in which the Japanese have significant investments – have had to close.

One of the beneficiaries of Japan’s scramble for birds has been the UK, where its farmers have been looking for new markets following Brexit and the frostiness the Europeans now have for British meat products. The Britons are keeping a stiff upper lip and carrying on negotiating with the EU.

Meanwhile, although they don’t expect to get the Japanese hooked on the great British banger, opportunities are opening up on the other side of the world to export plump, fresh British birds. So perhaps British chicken could save the Japanese Christmas going forward – or their version of it.

Back on the outskirts of Tokyo, the Takamoto’s neighbourhood has its own branch of KFC and three others within a short drive. As Christmas Eve approached I was wondering if the 2021 family feast would be a winner chicken dinner or a paltry poultry presentation? Judging by the picture I was just sent of a pile of bones, the finger lickin’ good Colonel saved the day.

Neil Newman is a thematic portfolio strategist focused on pan-Asian equity markets