Japan does not “celebrate” Halloween per se, there is a
definite consciousness of the holiday throughout the country. When you go to
the convenience stores, you can see little end-caps full of Halloween themed
candy, a lot of cafés and other businesses will put up some cursory Halloween
decorations in October, and Halloween costume parties are a fairly popular
pastime among younger Japanese people.
That being said, it is not nearly as major an event here as
it is in the United States. (Indeed, I get the distinct impression that it’s
not as big anywhere as it is in the United States). Some stores, like LOFT,
sell Halloween costumes, but on the whole it is uncommon for people to dress up
in costumes, even if they are going to a Halloween party. Likewise, Halloween
parties are mainly an event for young adults here. There are rare exceptions,
such as parties for expats, but there is no such thing as door to door
trick-or-treating, and young children would rarely participate in any kind of
Halloween festivities.
I don’t know for certain, but I suspect that the widespread
awareness of Halloween has something to do with Japanese government initiatives
(such as JET) to bring native English speakers into their public schools to
teach English. It is very common for these teachers (usually called ALTs, short
for Assistant Language Teacher) to teach lessons about holidays. So by the time
they have graduated high schools, they have been taught about Halloween at
least 9 or 10 times. The widespread dissemination of Western media probably
also plays a role.
In any case, most Japanese know about Halloween traditions,
even though they haven’t personally participated in them. I was asked at least
a dozen times in the week leading up to Halloween, “In America, do they really go out and get candy from
strangers?” To which my response was, “Not everybody, but a lot of people do. I
went trick-or-treating every year until I was 11 or 12.”
I miss handing out candy and doing Halloween stuff in my
home community in the US, but I did do the next best thing: I went to Universal
Studios in Osaka, Japan with some friends. USJ here has a Halloween Horror
Nights event very similar to the one at Universal Orlando, and basically
everyone there is dressed up. There’s a very strong cosplay vibe to the event
in Japan; you see a lot of groups dressed in matching costume. We even ran into
basically the entire cast of One Piece (a popular manga and anime) as we were
entering the park.
So, it’s not nearly as fun as, say, Hanami (Flower-viewing,
which takes place in the spring), but it’s definitely an interesting example of
the way that Japan integrates Western culture into its own.
