Maybe it's just a case of Baader-Meinhof hitting me; but, OP, do you watch Only Connect[1], by any chance?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_Connect

I've always wondered what exactly the meaning was of the entity in Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore", which dressed as Colonel Sanders (and Johnny Walker) guides the character in a Chunichi Dragons cap around town. I'm not sure this makes it any clearer, but it's hard not to think there's some in-joke involved.

True! That character was puzzling. As was the whole novel, though I appreciated it in its surrealism.

It is pretty funny to elevate American fast food mascots to the level of spiritual beings.

I’m surprised they haven’t found a way to lift the curse yet. Perhaps because it was imposed by a Kentucky Colonel, they don’t have enough expertise in Western mysticism in Japan. For some reason, animal sacrifice comes to mind as a possible solution. And the number eleven… convince Millie Bobby Brown to conduct the ritual for maximum effectiveness.

If memory serves, KFC is HUGE in Japan which I think amplifies the cultural relevance.

Your memory is correct. Fun fact: many Japanese people celebrate Christmas Eve by eating KFC, and Christmas Day by eating a strawberry cake. My understanding is that decades ago it was promoted as some kind of exotic Western tradition, and it stuck, even if no Western country actually does it.

> Fun fact: many Japanese people celebrate Christmas Eve by eating KFC, and Christmas Day by eating a strawberry cake. My understanding is that decades ago it was promoted as some kind of exotic Western tradition

Actually, it (well, the first half) was promoted (via actual promotional giveaways of chicken and bottles of wine) by KFC in the 1970s as a new way of celebrating Christmas, not an exotic Western tradition.

And it spread well beyond KFC. Christmas is the fried chicken day.

Some Singaporeans used to celebrate National Day (our independence day) with fried chicken, since our then-president looked a lot like Colonel Sanders [1][2]. :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Tan

[2] https://mothership.sg/2017/09/8-top-moments-in-tony-tans-pre...

> many Japanese people celebrate Christmas Eve by eating KFC

And in Sweden there is a tradition of watching Donald Duck cartoons on Christmas day afternoon. I found this quite bemusing when I spent a Christmas in the country once.

[0] https://www.thelocal.se/20181222/swedishchristmas-the-tradit...

Bizarre; reminds me of the Sports Illustrated curse, another sports-related jinx.

That's different and makes sense. SI features people on the cover who have been outliers in performance recently. Such outliers rarely last, regardless of magazine covers. Hence, the "curse" is really just reversion to the mean.

I absolutely love that they retrieved it from the river.