Halloween In Japan
TOKYO (Reuters) - A handful of giggling Japanese women wearing devil's horns and cat costumes gather under a giant neon-orange pumpkin outside a Tokyo shopping mall. A Halloween street party?
"Ah, no, this is cosplay," says 20-year-old Saori, referring to costume role-play, or the Japanese past-time of dressing up as their favorite animation movie character.
"Halloween is different," Saori says, giggling as she tugs at her hooded cape with cat ears. The cult around fancy dress, and Japan's love of quirky festivals and eccentric trends in general, may go towards explaining why Halloween has turned from an obscure foreign celebration into a popular cultural event here.
"Japanese wear suits every day, so at the weekend they like to be different," says Saori's friend Akiko.
The two point the way to the real Halloween party, which is taking place a few streets away. Amid inflatable ghosts and pumpkins in all shapes and sizes, hundreds of spectators crowd around a singer wearing a pumpkin-shaped hat. In fact, the street party in Kawasaki, on the outskirts of Tokyo, is just a warm-up to Halloween on October 31. The big bash happens on the Sunday before Halloween, when thousands of Japanese witches, vampires, devils and ghouls fill the streets of Kawasaki in a giant street parade.
Similar extravaganzas are erupting all over town. Tokyo Disneyland has been throwing Halloween fetes since mid-September -- starting even earlier than theme parks in the United States. Unlike in the United States, most Halloween activities in Japan appear to target adults rather than children. Mainstream clubs advertise "Fetish Halloween" and "Erotica Halloween" parties. Fashion retailers decorate their windows with slogans such as "Play! Party!! With cute trick!".
Japan's passion for Halloween extends a long tradition of festivals that liberate ordinary Japanese from the extreme control they face in everyday life, according to Patrick William Galbraith, a researcher at Sophia University's Japanese Studies faculty.
"The matsuri, or festival, might be seen as a communal experience that allows behaviors outside rigid behaviors and etiquette, one reason this social pressure release valve has been so crucial in Japan historically," he told Reuters by email. Galbraith sees costume role-play as characters from manga comic books and "anime" films as a similar escapist fantasy. In addition, Halloween and cosplay encourage another popular Japanese pastime: enthusiastic consumption.
Shopping malls in other Asian countries, too, have picked up on this aspect of Halloween. Around this time of the year, cobwebs and jack-o-lanterns adorn shops and bars in Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore and Seoul, tapping into a deeper Asian interest in the otherworld that shows through in local festivals for the dead. Halloween, or All Hallow's Eve, has its roots in Celtic tradition and marks the night before All Saints Day. Japan also has a celebration for the dead, known as Obon, but many Japanese don't seem to realize that Halloween has a similar meaning. They prefer to focus on the party.
"Japanese people like festivals very much, you see. We even celebrate Christmas, but we don't celebrate Christ, we just enjoy," says Yoshiaki Ei, an affable entrepreneur wearing jeans and a blue long-sleeve T-shirt.
Ei, a father of two, has organized trick-and-treat evenings for children in his Tokyo neighborhood for the past four years together with other Japanese, American and European families. "I think that's why Halloween is popular: it has nothing to do with Christ or the church, like other events in Western countries. It's very easy to have fun," he told Reuters. Last year, Ei dressed up as a huge traffic cone to watch over little princesses and Spider-men trick-or-treating in his street. Some twenty-odd families in his neighborhood agreed to open their houses that year, and were swamped by more than 500 children. "I hope it doesn't grow more," he said.
As the underground train rolls back into town after the early Halloween party in Kawasaki, two teenagers dressed as what can best be described as gothic nurses check their mobile phones and giggle. They are wearing white nurse's caps embellished with red crosses and bits of black lace; red-and-black stockings; skull earrings and skirts stitched together from red, white and black rags. This being Japan, they could be on their way to another Halloween bash, a cosplay event -- or simply a normal party.
The article above touches upon the very reason I think the Western version of Halloween has caught on in a land, as we have learned, so superstitious and fearful of the dead. It is not about the spooky elements or, much to the disdain of many a Japanese child I’m sure, the candy. It is all about dressing up, a cos-play for everybody and not just young Goth kids. Halloween was once a time of year for kids but within the last few decades the adults of the Western world have taken back the night, so to speak, and turned it into a time where they can dress up and play. In many ways Halloween is a chance for adults to reach back in time and relive their youths. In Japan, though the sentiment of nostalgia isn’t the same, the opportunity to dress up as an adult and decorate your home with spooky images is the attraction. Halloween decor went on sale back in August which was surprising, as this is exactly how it is back home. You have to get in those two months to sell sell sell! Now, I’ve seen these decorations being sold but I’ve not seen a single home decorated and it looks to me the only people purchasing this stuff are clubs to accentuate their Halloween parties or clothing stores to accentuate their racks. Walking into the small displays in these stores did put me in the mood for one of my favorite days of the year but it wasn’t the same as seeing a house all decked out in jack-o-lanterns and spider webs or scarecrows and ghosts. If you’re not into going to a bar dressed up as your favorite anime character as loud music blasts down upon you and your costumed self getting pleasantly plastered then Japanese Halloween is kind of dull. No Great Pumpkin, no sacks of tasty loot, no tricks or pranks and, for me, this year, no annual horror film marathon of madness! Even if I wanted go to an Osaka club dressed up as my favorite anime character (A Totoro costume would have been tough to make anyway) to have loud music blast down upon me and your costumed self getting pleasantly plastered I couldn’t because I was being sent into the Twilight Zone.
I won’t go on a rant here on how inept this Company can be sometimes when it comes to the most menial of tasks. Frankly, I’ve just become sort of immune and numb to it as it no longer surprises me and has become expected. Let me just graze on by by saying tickets were not sent to me as they should have been for my trek North and I had to make a detour into the Kyoto office to pick them up to find that they may have very well been scheduled incorrectly. Nobody in the office new English and I had to interrupt a staff meeting to get things sorted out with the supervisor of this area whom I had been dealing with off and on for the last two weeks. Things were fine, though, as tickets such as this were common here. I was being paranoid with a lot of grounds to be so but I decided to ease up and enjoy the train ride through the countryside and mountains on the way. Prior to this I spent walking around Kyoto killing time on a beautiful October day. Everything seemed great. I had the tickets. I was assured my taxi was going to arrive to pick me up on time. Peachy. I let my guard down.
About two hours later I arrive at a small train station in the city of Tsuruga. Tsuruga isn’t far off from Fukui and I may have even passed through on my way but nothing was recognizable. I did know I had a 45 minute walk ahead of me but with plenty of time before my lessons were to begin at five this wasn’t a problem. The map was clear and the class, though distant, was at the end of a straight line walk up a single road. No worries. Again, it was a great day and the exercise was welcome. I grabbed some lunch on the way as well as a few snacks for the Rocky Horror viewing that evening. I was going to hold onto at least one tradition, damn it! I downloaded the film last night and there it sat on the hard drive. Such tradition cannot be entered in without lots of soda, chocolate and popcorn and I stocked up. I found the class easy enough. It was located in front of a large Pachinko parlor. This is very convenient for the parents who want to blow some money for an hour while their kids learn a little English. I open the door. The first thing I notice about the class is that it is huge. Then the smell hits me, the appealing odor of clean. This class was also new. One could just look at the pristine carpeting to deduce this if they wanted to disbelieve their nasal passage. I step inside the class, remove my shoes and unknowingly find myself…in the Twilight Zone.
Problems first arise when I enter into my normal starting routine. I walk over to where the students name badges hang on the wall coathangers. Normally what I will do is take them all off the wall and organize them into lesson groupings along with the proper materials and books I will need for that hour. If it is a new class, as it was today, I will count the name badges to find out how many kids I have to teach. This is where the first inclination that things were out of sort hits me. The badges are not correctly labeled with the proper lessons. This isn’t uncommon, though. I have had to re-label the coathangers before and in some instances the wrong class names would date back to two years. But, wait, if this was a new class these were new students and the hangers should, thus, be new as well. As my mind tells itself that this might not necessarily be the case as the class could have moved I observe that the dates for these lessons do not correspond with the day I was teaching. In fact, there were no classes held on Wednesdays so said this wall of badges. I find the communication book and there is nothing to indicate that today’s lesson would be populated by students from another school for whatever reason. In fact, there is no note at all and everything is written in Japanese. I open the door that leads to the small and narrow teacher’s room. There is a table, fax machine, files, etc. All normal. I note a Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown calendar on the wall. On the table is the attendance book. I pick it up and open it to find that, indeed, no lessons were taught here that day. In short, the classes I had been assigned to teach didn’t exist! I call up our support line only to be told that those classes do exist and that materials should be in the classroom to indicate this. A teacher had just taught there last week, I was told. I am asked if I had gone to the wrong school. According to the map I had been given I am in the right place. The help line can’t help, go figure, so I am transferred to the schedule line. They just parrot what the help line had said. What I am being told is that I am in the right place and everything should be there. I ask them to check their computer system for students names in the attendance book I have. They tell me those students don’t exist. I tell them I have badges IN MY HAND to prove otherwise. I place them on hold while I try to make sense of this with closer scrutiny. Nope, nothing was in this class proving the existence of the lessons I was supposed to teach. Back to the phone I am told that they have just discovered two classes are located in the same city and that I could have went to the wrong one as they were supposed to be close by. I again tell them that my map was to the Tsuru…wait a minute. On the communication book it said Tsuruga #2. I had taken that to mean it was the second book but it could have mean the second school. I look at the attendance sheet again and find that indeed this school is named Dai-Tsuruga or Tsuruga #2. Okay, I was in the wrong school but I had followed the map to the letter and if this was the wrong school where was the right one? I am asked to go and look outside and see if I could see another school across the street as the addresses were that similar. Nope. Only the pachinko place. Back to the phone I am NOW told that the classroom is in the same building, something both myself and the schedule folks find quite odd. It was located on the second floor so out and up I go but, no, there is nothing on the second floor. The class still didn’t exist. Back to the phone I ask them to call the other school. If it is in the same building I will just listen for a ringing phone and follow it. I hang up. They call. The phone rings…the phone rings RIGHT NEXT TO ME behind the wall. It is at this point where I discover the secret passage. It is a small cut in the wall just as it would hit the other wall and created a small door that was just outside your vision if you didn’t know it was there. I walk through. I find myself in the exact mirror image of the room I had just left as though I hadn’t moved an inch. Same table. Same fax. Same Charlie Brown calendar. Except in this room there is now a ringing phone. I answer it and to the laughter of the woman on the other end I explain the situation. There is a mirror image door in this room that enters, I presume, into the mirror image classroom but that door is locked. My key doesn’t fit. Outside in the hall I find a separate entranceway to the other school but that door is also locked. Ah, but there is a mirror image mailbox in the same spot only on the left hand side of the hall. I dig out the key and I walk into, sure enough, the mirror image of the class I had just left only here I have proper nametags and teaching materials. This was all very, very trippy and the schedule folks and I had a good laugh about the situation. Of course, part of me is cursing the supervisor in Kyoto for not informing me of all this. I wonder if there were mirror image kids, twins, and a JT with a goatee like in that Star Trek episode where every one finds their evil doppelganger. That image was enough to inspire a story idea which I jotted down on an envelope. So I teach my lessons in the Twilight Zone double school, my cab is on time and I make it back to my apartment around 11 in the evening. And now I open up the bag of popcorn, peal back the chocolate wrapper and press play…
“Michael Rennie was ill The day the earth stood still But he told us where we stand…”
And now some pictures from the day:
