“While this article was originally written in 2017, it has since been completely rewritten to reflect how Halloween in Japan looks today…”
— Donny Kimball
You know what, folks, Halloween used to be something of legend in Japan. When I originally penned this piece in 2017, the whole thing felt very different, and I was a different person too. Back in those days, I used to DJ and kept at that until 2016. While those were some good nights, this Japan travel blog basically took over my life and subsequently I finally threw in the towel one very hungover morning. That said, what I remember most from those years was the sheer insanity in Shibuya and the sense that basically everyone young was partaking in the revelry. Lately, I am an overworked old curmudgeon in my 40s, so I will happily leave all of that to you younger folks.
That does not mean Halloween somehow disappeared while I was getting old. Trick-or-treating isn’t really a thing here, but adults dressing up in slutty nurse costumes certainly still is. The holiday in Japan skews toward grown-ups putting on costumes, heading into town and spending money rather than kids wandering around collecting candy. October 31 is a normal working day here, not a public holiday, so when it lands on a weekday, the dressing up and going out tends to spill into the weekend before as well. You can see that grown-up appetite in Tokyo Disney Resort’s annual Halloween season and in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district, which hosts one of the largest Halloween events in Japan.
What changed from when I was dropping fat beats at some of Tokyo’s best clubs is how much freedom all those costumed grown-ups have to spill onto the street. After the crowd crush in Seoul’s Itaewon district killed about 160 people, the risks surrounding enormous, loosely controlled gatherings became impossible to ignore. Shibuya mayor Hasebe Ken then explicitly asked people not to come to the station area for Halloween, warning that an Itaewon-type accident could happen there at any time. Tokyo has been reining in the street party ever since. Of course, a global pandemic didn’t do the masked madness any favors either.
Shibuya & the Street Party Crackdown
Nowhere is that change more obvious than around Shibuya Scramble Crossing and the Center Gai shopping street, which were once ground zero for Tokyo’s Halloween chaos. Shibuya Ward now launches a campaign against the mess every autumn, with slogans like Goodbye Bad Halloween, and still braces for thousands of people at the peak in Center Gai anyway. The Hachiko statue gets fenced off around Halloween, dozens of stores are asked to suspend alcohol sales for Halloween night, and Luup and Lime rental scooters are suspended around the station. A recent budget for all of it came to roughly 74 million yen.
More importantly for anyone actually going there, the restrictions no longer begin and end with Halloween. Today, street drinking is banned every night from 6pm to 5am around Shibuya Station, including the Scramble, Center Gai and Miyashita Park. Littering can also earn you a 2,000 yen fine, aimed at what local residents had complained about most for years: the garbage the crowds left behind. In other words, Shibuya’s response gradually moved from trying to control one notoriously messy night to regulating the behavior that made Halloween such a headache in the first place.
So does that mean you should forget about Shibuya entirely? Not necessarily, and even Shibuya Ward draws a distinction between Halloween itself and the nuisance surrounding it. Officials instead point people toward shopping-street events, clubs and other commercial venues where the festivities can happen within some kind of controlled environment. The trade-off is pretty straightforward. Shibuya will still draw enormous crowds, so you can certainly witness what remains of the old street phenomenon, but that density also creates opportunities for pickpocketing and groping, and masks and heavy makeup make identifying someone afterward harder.
Alas, Shibuya sadly isn’t the only street gathering to have been scaled back, either. Kawasaki’s famous Halloween parade has since ended for good, removing another fixture from the old Halloween map. Shinjuku has moved in the same regulatory direction as Shibuya. Around the Kabukicho nightlife district, street drinking is banned from 5pm on Halloween until 5am the next morning, and local shops are also asked not to sell alcohol while the restriction is in force.
Where the Costumes Went
If Shibuya shows how much the old street party has contracted, Ikebukuro shows where some of that energy went instead. The Ikebukuro Halloween Cosplay Fest takes over the neighborhood on a weekend around the end of October, opening with Ikehalo Night, an evening event for adults 18 and older at the Sunshine City complex, before two days of the main event from 10am to 6pm. A cosplay parade fills Sunshine 60 Street and Animate Street, while Naka-Ikebukuro Park serves as the main stage. The costumes are still there in force. They have simply migrated into an event with schedules, boundaries and someone actually running the show.
Of course, organization comes with rules, and Ikebukuro has quite a few of them. Both cosplayers and photographers need registration tickets, and cosplayers cannot simply ride the train across Tokyo already dressed for the occasion. You are expected to arrive in normal clothes, use the designated facilities to get into costume, and return to regular clothes before heading home. Even makeup touch-ups are restricted to those designated spaces. Photographers have their own basic obligation that applies well beyond Ikebukuro too: ask before photographing somebody in costume.
Tokyo Nightclubs on Halloween
Since my days behind the decks, the clubs have changed but the custom of partying on Halloween certainly has not. Contact and Vision, two of Shibuya’s biggest clubs, both closed as redevelopment reshaped the neighborhood. That matters for Halloween because clubs have long provided a natural home for the costumes and late-night revelry that once spilled so visibly across Shibuya. Clubs are temporary by nature, especially in a city that never seems particularly sentimental about redevelopment, while the Halloween party train simply moves on to whatever dance floor is still there.
In Shibuya, Atom in the Maruyamacho club area operates from 10pm until 4:30am, so there are still places to take a costume after the street crowds start becoming more trouble than they are worth. Just do not assume that whatever happened last Halloween will happen again. Club lineups, themed nights and admission details change every year. Check the latest Halloween information published directly by the club before heading out, particularly if your plans depend on a specific party, DJ or admission arrangement. Unlike when I was DJing alongside legends like Tha Boogie Bandit (dressed as Darth Maul and pictured above), I no longer know which parties are the best.
There are also practical limits to what you can bring through the door, regardless of how committed you are to the costume. Prop weapons are commonly stopped at club entrances, while carrying an actual weapon can turn your Halloween night into a much less entertaining encounter with the authorities. Masks will also need to come off when staff check your ID. Then there is the problem nobody thinks about while assembling an elaborate costume in front of a mirror: packed dance floors get hot. A full outfit can become miserable quickly, and latex masks are particularly unforgiving once you are surrounded by hundreds of other people generating body heat.
Halloween at Tokyo Disney & Universal Studios Japan
For an even more controlled version of Halloween, Tokyo Disney Resort has turned the season into an annual fixture of its own. Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea run their Halloween event every autumn, but full costumes are only permitted during set windows the resort announces each year, so check them before packing one. Outfits are also limited to characters from eligible works. That makes Disney a very different proposition from the anything-goes street culture associated with old Shibuya.
Disney is just as particular as Ikebukuro about where you change. There are no changing spaces inside the parks, and guests cannot use restrooms or lockers to get into costume. You therefore need to arrive dressed or use the paid changing space at the Ikspiari shopping mall before entering. Even once inside, Disney can require guests to remove costume elements during shows when those pieces obstruct somebody else’s view. None of this is especially complicated if you plan for it, but showing up with an elaborate costume stuffed into a bag and assuming you will figure everything out after passing through the gates is a good way to create unnecessary problems.
Osaka takes that same supervised model in a considerably darker direction. Universal Studios Japan runs Halloween Horror Nights from early September into November, with street zombies roaming the park from 6pm. The event is now well over a decade old, and the appetite for crowds, costumes and collective revelry never went away. Here, the chaos is part of the product, which means someone else has already worried about where the zombies are supposed to go.
Getting a Halloween Costume in Tokyo
Assuming all of this has somehow convinced you to participate, finding a costume in Tokyo is easy enough. Discount megastore MEGA Don Quijote Shibuya is open 24 hours and stretches from the basement through 7F, with costumes and party goods on 5F. The chain starts its Halloween campaign weeks ahead of time, so there is plenty available before the actual night arrives. Predictably, the store also gets crowded as Halloween approaches. Buying your costume early therefore saves you from competing with everyone else who waited until the last possible moment to discover that, yes, Halloween happens on October 31 every single year.
If you would rather assemble something yourself, Okadaya Shinjuku is the more useful stop. Located a two-minute walk from JR Shinjuku Station, the store is split between two buildings, with one devoted to fabric and textiles and the other handling costume-related goods. The latter has stage makeup and cosplay supplies on 2F and wigs on 3F, making it much better suited to building a specific look than grabbing a complete costume off the rack. That distinction matters more now that events like Ikebukuro’s have made reproducing an actual character a visible part of Halloween in Tokyo.
One old costume standby did not make it, though. The Shibuya flagship of the home-goods chain Hands, formerly Tokyu Hands, has called it quits after nearly 48 years, adding yet another familiar name to the list of places that did not survive unchanged from the Tokyo I was writing about in 2017. It is one more reminder of how much has changed since then, me included. Now on the wrong side of 40, I have become far more interested in finishing my work than joining thousands of costumed people in Shibuya. Yet younger people are still dressing up and going out. The venues change, the rules tighten and the crowds migrate somewhere else, but somehow Halloween keeps finding another place to happen.
Is Halloween Still Worth It
So is Halloween still worth it like it was during the 2010s? Well, that’s up to you, but personally, I’d much rather go take a look at the fall foliage these days than get plastered drunk in Shibuya while wearing a face full of paint in a hot and sweaty costume. That said, for all of you young folks, don’t let an old geezer like myself in his forties put you off from trying to have a good night. If you look hard enough, there is somewhere out there for you to party (even if that isn’t in the middle of Shibuya Crossing).
Until next time travelers…
