Letters Home: Halloween in Japan

Halloween, as an event in Japan, has grown exponentially in recent years to the point where some municipal communities are banning celebrations due to the rowdiness of the crowds that descend upon certain areas of larger cities.

Every year, it seems that Halloween’s popularity continues to grow.  Interestingly, though, it is — for the most part — a celebration for adults and not children. In the U.S., Halloween has also become really popular among adults to dress up and attend costume parties, but it still maintains the feel and scope of being a holiday for little kids.

“Trick or treating” is still common and popular, and the new tradition of “trunk or treating” where churches and community centers will have adults pull their cars into large parking lots where kids then go from car trunk to car trunk to say “Trick or Treat” to get candy has become normal.

While some communities still have the old-fashioned tradition of kids going from door to door to get candy by climbing onto neighbors’ porches and ringing the doorbell to get their “treats,” many parents worry about their children running amok at night in costumes and masks and visiting the homes of strangers to get candy. So, the “trunk or treat” tradition is more controllable and supervised with known people participating from the community.

Of course, when I was a kid, we ran wild through not only our own neighborhood but we would venture as far and as wide as possible to hit as many homes as we could to get as much candy as we could.  We would run into other groups of friends out trick or treating and they would advise us of the houses that had the “good” candy (which meant full-sized candy bars and not the miniature ones) and advised us to avoid ones that had not so preferable candy. 

We did the same by giving out the intel on which houses had the best goods back to them.  Looking back, it seems really risky that we would be dressed in costumes, with masks that covered our faces, excitedly darting across dark streets to get to as many houses as we could, to receive candy from virtual strangers. Times have changed, for sure, and the possibility of people doing nefarious things to kids is more prevalent today, perhaps, so parents must take the necessary precautions to keep their kids safe.

Our parents only said, “Be careful and have fun!” And off we went!

“Trick or treating”, as a part of the Japanese Halloween tradition, never really caught on in Japan.  You wouldn’t know it, though, from seeing all the Halloween displays that stores have from late August in preparation for the holiday. So many establishments and stores prominently display Halloween decorations and gewgaws, including copious amounts of candy and sweets. But the idea of trick or treating just isn’t common in Japan … yet. As it gains in popularity, who knows, “trick or treating” may become a thing here, too.

The largest celebrations in Japan basically consist of adults dressing up and going to areas to revel with others on Halloween night. Several decades ago, expat foreigners living in Tokyo would dress up and board the Yamanote train that makes a huge loop around Tokyo where they would congregate in one train car and just ride around eating snacks and drinking alcohol on the train.   Eventually, Japanese young people started to join in and it became so huge that the train company had to ask people not to do it. Regular commuters were so annoyed at all the costumed revelers that it became a huge nuisance. 

The same thing has happened today with crowds of people gathering in certain areas to celebrate.  Shibuya used to be the place to go, but in recent years the municipality has forbidden people to come dressed up to party in the streets. The problem was that the crowds became unruly and they left so much garbage on the ground that Shibuya Ward ended up spending taxpayer’s money to clean up the mess from the street parties.

Initially, the community welcomed the attention and crowds but then it just got to be so huge that it became an annoyance, so now they constantly make announcements before the big day telling potential partiers to stay away and not to come to the area.

Because Japan has the cosplay tradition, I think that is why the idea of wearing costumes took hold and became so popular. It’s unfortunate that the crowds began to be destructive and were bad about littering causing the ward to take the drastic action of canceling and banning the celebration in recent years. It was an interesting coming together of Japanese people and foreigners on that one day to enjoy dressing up, socializing, and having fun.

One of the main impetuses of the Japanese sudden (or maybe gradual?) fascination with Halloween goes back to about the year 2000 when Tokyo Disneyland hosted its first Halloween event. Still today, Halloween at Disneyland is a huge event and celebration with scores of people planning to spend Oct. 31 at the theme park. Other theme parks jumped onto the bandwagon to sponsor special events related to Halloween every year, as well.

Many restaurants, cafes, and bars will also host Halloween events with costume contests which Japanese people really enjoy. In fact, Japanese creativity when it comes to making costumes is exceptional. Of course, traditional Halloween costumes are very popular, but with the anime boom, many people enjoy dressing up as their favorite manga characters. A popular destination for these types of costumes is in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro area.

I am always amazed at the types of businesses that decorate for Halloween. There is a small community bus that takes passengers from a train station to a local mall near where I live and every year the bus is decked out to the nines with all sorts of spooky Halloween decorations. The amazing thing, also, is that no one steals the decorations even though they are so accessible. 

My local train station places Halloween objects in windowsills lining a long hallway from the ticket wicket to the elevators. Most college towns in the U.S. would have to nail down these types of things as students would steal them just for the sake of stealing these loosely placed objects. It is refreshing that decorations can be placed in the open and it is assumed they will be left alone for all to enjoy here in Japan.

Even my local medical clinic and pharmacy catches the Halloween fever and decorate the waiting and public areas. So, indeed, Japanese people celebrate Halloween but, while Halloween traditions and customs in Japan are decidedly different than in other countries, there are enough similarities and commonalities that allow people from outside to participate and enjoy in the festivities, getting a taste of a traditional Halloween we associate from home.