No, they aren’t. Just a marketing term I suppose.
Though it depends on the dish I’m making, in general I prefer boneless (and sometimes skinless) cuts. I do know that people say that bone-in chicken is more flavorful and I do tend to agree. But as I’m not too thrilled with getting my hands messy when presented with a choice (which isn’t too often), I’ll choose boneless. The exception would be for roast chicken or fried chicken, Those are certainly messy to eat, but if they’re properly prepared the meat will generally easily come off of thighs, breasts and sometimes drumsticks. OTOH, I almost never order any type of wings because there’s not much meat on them and they’re messy (and I don’t consider boneless wings to be wings!)
And I stuffed the chicken with the bones intact because I wanted to present the finished dish on the table like at Thanksgiving. My Japanese friends had NEVER been served a whole roast chicken and were thrilled to have the chance to eat one.
One last thing…if cooking or eating the Japanese fried chicken dish known as “karaage”, I would never choose chicken with the bones in. Except for a popular and delicious beer hall called “München” in Ehime Prefecture’s Matsuyama City, I’ve personally never seen or eaten karaage that wasn’t boneless.
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I see! So you were saying you had to search for a butcher who would order a whole chicken! Well done!
Heard! I’ve only had it once, but I loved it!
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But the novel preparation was the buffalo sauce, not the wings themselves. That, in my opinion, is noteworthy enough to warrant it as something special and different.
Frying breaded chicken tenderloins is just fried chicken (or a schnitzel, if you will). It’s not even frying them differently, say like Korean fried chicken.
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Yes, I asked some of my students for a reputable butcher and thankfully there was one within walking distance. I became a repeat customer of theirs even for other items after my first time purchasing the whole chicken there.
I took a look at the karaage you ate…indeed it looked yummy! 
There are many variations on the dish. When I’d make it myself in Japan, I’d marinate the cut pieces of raw chicken in ginger, garlic and soy sauce and coat it in potato starch rather than flour. To me, it crisps up better. Sometimes that type of karaage is referred to as “tatsuta-age”.
Here’s a decent recipe if anyone is interested (it doesn’t include garlic, though.)
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Thank you! I also asked for thoughts comparing it to Nanban, and found some interesting answers.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about that.
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Oh @kobuta. Get thee to a pub and eat some chicken fingers with honey mustard sauce pronto! 
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Thanks for the link. As @Amandarama wrote about, “nanbanzuke” recipes are influenced by the Spanish and Portuguese.
You can see/read more about it and Chicken Nanban in this Wikipedia link and screenshot:
I personally don’t equate Chicken Nanban with vinegar as much as I do tartar sauce…the dish is much too often swimming in it and though I like tartar sauce, too much of anything, even if it’s something I like, isn’t good.
To finish up, Chicken Nanban isn’t karaage (or Chicken Tatsuta), but a way of taking it and as some like to say, “kicking it up a notch”. Personally I just prefer a squeeze of lemon on any style of Japanese fried chicken or a ramekin of Kewpie mayonnaise on the side. but Chicken Nanban is a VERY popular dish…especially at the thousands of izakaya (Japanese pubs) across Japan (there are more and more izakaya in North America, too!)
BTW, it’s considered very poor manners in Japan to squeeze the slice of lemon (which is almost always provided) on karaage before asking the others eating if it’s OK or not. I’ve seen people get rather angry about it.
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Even after 40 years, I sill miss those Bo Pilgrim boneless whole chickens.
Or boneless…
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Nor even from Buffalo!
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Many thanks for the gift link.
I gave up my sub to the NYT some time ago (I still have an account, but not a paid sub) and do almost miss the truly excellent writing and editing enough to sub again. (*)
Maybe next time they have a brief sale…
(*) Sometimes the Yahoo aggregator carries stuff from NYT, WaPo, Guardian, etc. I amuse myself by guessing, without first looking, which organ published a particular story and am seldom wrong.
Several grammar/word selection mistakes = Guardian; a few mistakes = WaPo; no mistakes = NYT. (Most often, that is, maybe not 100% of the time, but pretty close).
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