Raw Japan
Slices of Japanese business, politics and life
Colonel Sanders returns
After nearly a quarter century on the bottom of a Japanese river, Colonel Sanders has come up smiling.
Ecstatic fans of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team in 1985 tossed a statue of the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder into the Dotonbori River in Osaka, western Japan, when the perpetual underdogs won their first Central League pennant in 21 years.
Tigers fans, who saw a resemblance between the Colonel and the team’s bearded American slugger, Randy Bass, jumped into what was then one of Japan’s most polluted rivers when the losing streak ended — and took the life-size statue along for the swim.
The Tigers went on to win the Japan Series championship in 1985, but have never done so again, prompting some to suggest the missing Colonel had cast a curse.
