Our second clue showed this curious set, supplied me many moons ago by my chicken connoisseur Malcolm Thompson, and it is definitely the least known of all the "Domino" branded sets. As for why we have a chicken, they are the most common agricultural bird, and they actually outnumber the human species by four to one, which makes it rather a shame that they cannot rise up and use this power to demand a lot better treatment for some of their non-free range brethren.
This chicken is called an Ondori, a name we have now slightly altered to Jidori, and it means `local chicken`, in other words a chicken that was bred in the local area and has not travelled far to meet its fate. It also, pleasingly, usually means that the bird has been well bred, looked after, and lived a free range life, which, according to the Japanese, makes the meat taste better and have health benefits for the consumer. Now we just have to convince the rest of the world of that.
There is one problem with this set, to my way of thinking, and that is that there is no mention of the art or artist which the pictures were taken from. That would have been most interesting and allowed for further research.
As for the set, we now have a new home page for the British American Tobaco "Domino Filter" cards as mentioned above - but to save you returning you will find it in our newsletter of the 21st of October 2023, as the diary date for Saturday the 21st of October, so first up, with the entry for "Animaux et Reptiles", the first set if we work in alphabetical order. However none of these sets are listed in our original World Tobacco Issues Index, because it was printed before any of them were issued. We have to wait until the updated version of that work to find this set, where it is listed as :
2.J. "DOMINO FILTER". French language issues, without name of firm, in Mauritius. 1960-63. All small size, 68 x 37.
- LES OISEAUX ET L`ART JAPONAIS (Japanese Birds and Art). Sm. Nd. (25). ... B705-560