Happy Halloween!
Until only recently, Japan never celebrated Halloween. And why would it? The nation honors the spirits of its ancestors in August, during the ancient Buddhist festival of O-bon, when ancestral spirits are said to revisit the family altars —and when reported encounters with ghosts and spirits reach a fevered peak.
But over the past decade, Tokyo in particular has come to embrace Halloween. Or at least the grown-ups have: While there’s no such thing as “trick or treating” for the kids, adults in ever-larger numbers pull out all the stops when it comes to innovative costumes, lavish club events and all of the escapism that goes along with it.
And it’s not just one or two nights at the end of the month. No, in the nation’s capital, the creep of costumed revelers on the streets starts as early as the first weekend in October.
It is just as with many other non-native cultural traditions and holidays, such as Christmas and Valentine’s Day, the Japanese have adopted Halloween in their own way .