A ban on informal Halloween street gatherings didn't keep many costumed revelers away from Tokyo's Shibuya ward on Oct. 31, 2023. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
TOKYO — Leaders of this city’s most popular nightlife districts held a news conference Monday and called on revelers to stay away during Halloween.
Shinjuku Mayor Kenichi Yoshizumi said his ward saw an increase of about 3,000 visitors during Halloween last year after Shibuya strongly discouraged street parties and banned public drinking.
Shibuya became a popular place to spend Halloween night in the early 2000s. In recent years, many costumed revelers and those who come to see them have crowded the iconic Shibuya Scramble intersection and narrow streets around Shibuya Station.
So many people were drinking and littering last year in Kabukicho, a popular redlight district in Shinjuku, that ward officials were collecting garbage strewn everywhere the next morning.
“To leave garbage behind after drinking and eating is not what an educated and rational person would do,” Yoshizumi said during a joint news conference with Shibuya Mayor Ken Hasebe at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.
Shibuya Mayor Ken Hasebe shares his concerns Halloween street drinking and overtourism at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo, Oct. 7, 2024. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
Shinjuku will ban public drinking between Shinjuku Station and Kabukicho from 5 p.m. Oct. 31 to 5 a.m. Nov. 1. Ward officials also requested area stores to refrain from selling alcohol and will place about 100 staff and security guards to patrol the area, Yoshizumi said.
Shibuya ward has asked 64 stores near Shibuya Station to also refrain from alcohol sales between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m. Oct. 26 to Nov. 1, according to information provided by the ward. It also plans to field about 130 staff to patrol on Oct. 25-26 and Oct. 30-31, according to the ward.
The ward banned public drinking between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m. near the Shibuya Station starting Oct. 1 to deter littering, according to the ward.
After a call to refrain from Halloween partying and alcohol sales last year, about 15,000 people celebrated Halloween in Shibuya, about one-fourth the estimated 60,000 the ward estimates usually turn out, Hasebe said.
Since Shinjuku saw an increased number of visitors during Halloween last year, the mayors said they decided to work on the issue together this year.
After 159 people died in a Halloween crowd crush in South Korea’s Itaewon district in 2022. Hasebe strongly discouraged people from gathering around Shibuya Station last year in fear of a similar incident occurring.
