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By 10.15 on Tuesday night, Princess Peach, Luigi and a reanimated vampire corpse had cut their losses. The once simple joy of dressing up, getting sloshed and being a mild public nuisance had just become too onerous.
In their fallback position, drinking outside a FamilyMart roughly 500 metres from the centre of Tokyo’s youth-centric Shibuya district, the trio had space to dissect their disappointment in Halloween 2023. They may not be the only ones doing so. To the extent that Japan has, for many global investors, become the most interesting bash in Asia, this was an oddly chosen moment to play the party pooper.
Last year, explained Peach, the Shibuya Halloween gathering and first proper post-Covid reassembly felt liberated, unstoppable and promissory of huge future expansion. The numbers in 2022 were significantly lower than the 2019 turnout but the scene was a vigorously messy, unscripted and non-traditional street party. “But, yeah, this year it’s sort of dead,” moaned Peach’s undead companion.
At an estimated 15,000 revellers at the peak on Tuesday night, numbers were less than half what they had been in 2019. More critically for a night that venerates spookiness, there wasn’t much atmosphere. All of which was the plan. For weeks now, Ken Hasebe, the thrice-elected mayor of Shibuya ward, has been mounting a zealous campaign to scare both domestic and foreign revellers away from celebrating on his patch. The light vandalism, littering and youthful chaos of previous years gave him his moral high ground; the tragic Halloween-night loss of 159 lives in Seoul’s Itaewon last year gave him a sombre practical justification.
So began a campaign to blot out pumpkin-themed exuberance: signs saying “No events for Halloween on Shibuya streets” were plastered along streets and shared online. Police and private security were out in force as a whistling, loud-hailing suppressant of high jinx. Hasebe had even declared, without any serious legal sanction, a ban on street drinking: local media helpfully presented it as real enough to ensure compliance.
OK. Boo-hoo. So young people did not get quite the bedevilled booze-up they craved. Insignificant perhaps, but it still jars. For those still worried about the “Japan is changing” investment thesis, the attempted Halloween ban may not prove permanently haunting, but it could have the power to spook.
Japan, as a potential target for heavyweight global investors, appears to be in a remarkable sweet spot. The now constant visits by fund managers who once gave it a wide berth indicate that a diverse collection of positive narratives — from improving corporate governance to demography-driven consolidation — are aligned as never before.
But this is deceptively fragile stuff. Investors say they need real conviction that this alignment is more than a passing phase and that the structures and willpower are in place to keep it all running. At the same time, China, which has for years roared the far louder story of growth in the region, is looking far less investible. There are plenty of reasons for this reversal, not least the geopolitical divisions that are reshaping investment everywhere.
To many, however, the economic and investment risks in China can also be neatly summed up as the threat of “Japanification”: the idea that the confluence of a housing market crisis, massive leverage and an ageing population could doom China to the same “lost decades” that so crushed Japan. The problem with “Japanification” becoming a buzzword, though, is that it recalls why the term exists. The country at greatest risk from a repetition of the policy mis-steps and foot-dragging that brought about Japanification has always been Japan itself.
What has any of this to do with banning Halloween? An answer, of sorts, comes from Peach and her grumpy conclusion that Hasebe’s campaign was an assault on youth by a politician with old voters to please.
Japan’s “lost decades” stretched far longer than they should because of two refusals: a political reluctance to make a clear priority of the interests of young Japanese, and a corporate reluctance to embrace creative destruction. Banning Halloween may look trivial, but there were some old demons at large on Tuesday night.
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