‘Curse of the Colonel’ lifted? Japan’s Hanshin Tigers hope ritual ceremony bats away years of bad luck

Japan’s Hanshin Tigers professional baseball team is hoping it has finally banished the so-called Curse of the Colonel, after the life-size statue of KFC founder Colonel Harland Sanders tossed by the team’s fans into a river nearly 40 years ago underwent a religious cleansing ceremony and burial.

Fans of the Osaka-based team have long had a reputation for being among the most fervent in the country and for many successful seasons before 1985, fans would celebrate victories by leaping off the bridge over the Dotonburi River in central Osaka.

The river was filthy and deep – and there was at least one fatality as a result of a leap from the bridge – but Hanshin supporters did not earn their reputation for being fanatics without good reason.

After winning the Central League pennant in 1985, a group of Tigers fans outdid themselves and seized a plastic statue of Colonel Sanders from outside a nearby KFC outlet. Evading police, they threw the iconic statue into the river, where it promptly sank into the mud and was lost.

That act of vandalism was the start of what became known as the “Curse of the Colonel”, when the team’s fortunes plummeted and fans began to wonder if they would ever win another championship.

In March 2009, dredging operations on the river discovered the battered statue. After it was recovered from its watery resting place, hopes were raised that the curse had been lifted, but the Tigers continued to underperform.

Until the 2023 season.

Relatively unheralded, the Tigers went on a winning streak that finally saw them win the championship after a 7-1 victory over local rivals, the Orix Buffaloes, on November 4.

Free of the curse at last, the management of Japan KFC Holdings decided it was finally time to give the