TOKYO (TR) – Authorities across Japan are on high alert as Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, raising fears of a repeat of the drunken mayhem that has plagued city centers in recent years.
With Halloween just around the corner, local governments across Japan are scrambling to contain the annual chaos that has come to define the holiday in the country’s nightlife districts, where costumed revelers drinking heavily in the streets have replaced trick-or-treating as the dominant image of October 31.
Nowhere is that anxiety more acute than in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo’s premier party district, where ward mayor Ken Hasebe appeared at a September press conference clutching a poster bearing the blunt message: “Goodbye Bad Halloween.” His expression, notes Kyodo News (0ct. 28), was far from festive.
Shibuya has been battling Halloween disorder for years. Fights, mountains of litter, and deafening noise became chronic problems on the night, prompting the ward to ask shops near Shibuya Station to voluntarily stop selling alcohol from 2018.
The following year, street drinking was banned outright by ordinance. Since June this year, littering carries a ¥2,000 on-the-spot fine under a separate ordinance, and the ward says it will deploy additional patrol teams on the night.
The concern is sharpened by the calendar. This year, October 31 falls on a Saturday, and authorities expect significantly larger crowds than in a typical year. Peak crowd figures at the Shibuya Center-gai area reached around 20,000 persons in 2024. Officials are bracing for that number to rise.
There is, however, one potential dampener beyond the ordinances: the weather. In 2025, rain kept peak crowd numbers down to roughly 4,500, according to ward figures, a sharp fall that officials will be hoping nature repeats.
