Today is Halloween, a day for wearing ghoulish costumes and having lots of scary fun. Although you can see plenty of Halloween decorations in shops in Japan, and maybe enjoy Jack-o’-Lantern-shaped melon bread at a convenience store, in general Halloween is not really a Japanese event but more of a cultural bauble imported from the West. Raising kids who are half-Japanese and half-American has always been a challenge for me and my wife since we wanted them to really be a part of both countries, which means (on the American side, at least) having a cultural awareness of trick-or-treating and Scooby Doo and being able to sing the School House Rock songs (they can). When my kids were younger, we’d plan trips to the U.S. in October so they could have fun dressing up in costumes and going around the neighborhood getting candy just like all the other American children, and we treasure those memories now. You never know how the complex world of anime memes will work, and for some reason Japanese artists have really embraced Halloween as an excuse to make incredible cute moe art. If you want to see anime Halloween art, I’ll be posting some on my Twitter feed and the J-List Facebook Page.
Halloween is a fun time to celebrate costumes and moe art from Japan.
