   
 | From the Editor's Desk
How a White Lie Gave Japan KFC for Christmas One cunning business maneuver created a tradition and saved a franchise.
This year, millions of people across Japan will celebrate Christmas around buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Families will order "Party Barrels" weeks in advance, replete with this year's offering of cole slaw, shrimp gratin, triple-berry tiramisu cake, and, of course, fried chicken. Santa-clad Colonel Sanders statues will stand at attention outside storefronts, grinning mutely through December as KFC Japan sales multiply tenfold, earning the chain a third of its annual income. The corporate promotion is one of Japan's longest-standing Christmas traditions.
As with most Christmas traditions, it all started with a marketing campaign. For years, English-language media cited company spokespeople, who said the idea came from expats looking for an alternative to turkey. There was never a reason to doubt the company's account, until the man who brought KFC to Japan spoke up. Takeshi Okawara, manager of Japan's first KFC, came forward in recent years with a confession that upended years of innocent origin narratives - a confession that KFC denies. The man who brought the Colonel to Japan says it started with a lie.
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