Another Halloween weekend has come and gone here on Planet Japan, the land of rampant cross-cultural misappropriation. I expect the music venues were hopping, and the costumed shenanigans going full blast last night in my old Vancouver stomping grounds, and that those who partook in whatever currently passes for the night of ghouls and St. Paddy chasing the snakes out of Ireland here in Olde Nagoyaland are likely still limping about in various states of disrepair at their respective day jobs.
As for me, on my 49th Halloween, I'm sitting at home, nursing a stubborn, middling, change of season cold...and quietly thankful that my usual Monday evening student has cancelled his 7:30 session once again. The weather has been more bi-polar than usual, and the trees have finally started taking on their full, brilliant autumnal hues. This goodly spell should last 7-10 days, post All Hallow's Eve, before a more distinctly late season tone sets in. The darkness and chill of winter is just around the corner. In fact, I had to drag the gas heater out last night...almost a full three weeks earlier than usual. Something tells me that we're in for a cold one this year. The shops, as if on cue, also started in earnest with the Christmas jingles at the beginning of last week. Strange, being in a Japanese supermarket, wandering the dried seaweed and miso paste aisle in shorts and a t-shirt, surrounded by cut-outs of pumpkins and witches, while the unmistakeable muzak stylings of Frosty the Snowman waft through the stores p.a., and around the neatly stacked sacks of rice and packets of dried noodles. Ho,ho,ho.
There was I time that I would join in on the gaijin Halloween escapades. For a couple of years, in the late 90's, I'd make my way out to Osaka, all decked out in my seasonal freakery, and do the infamous Kanjo-sen (loop-line) Party. This was a thing for about a decade, back when Halloween still had some hip currency over here; several years before it quite suddenly and inexplicably caught on with the local J-natives - at which point it was officially spayed, neutered, digested, and regurgitated....and essentially became pablum 'dog's vomit'. This often happens when the local J-natives adopt something they take a liking to the 'idea' of, be it Halloween, Mexican food, rock and roll or Disneyland. By the time it rolls out the other side of the 'Japaniser', it's usually been pasteurized, de-clawed, de-fanged, pureed, powder puffed, and shaped into something barely resembling the original article. In short, transformed into just another co-opted, commercialized, sterile bucket of pukey creamed corn to be avoided and ignored at all costs.
In the days before smart phones and universal social networking took hold, the infamous Kanjo-sen Party originated as a clandestinely organized, guerrilla event, the details of which were largely passed on by word-of-mouth through the then more tightly-knit community of gaijin ne'er do wells and miscreants in the greater Kansai area. I had close ties to a group fitting this description over there, having done my first stint on Planet Japan back in the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe area in '89-90, so I was up on all the latest happenings and goings on in what was then something akin to the 'Wild West'. The attraction was obvious, as my then and current place of residence, Nagoya, had always been a bit of a back-water - a place where little of anything ever really happens. It's reputation as deadbeat central precedes it...being full of cheapskates and bumpkins - a place where there's little to do after 11 pm, and that's woefully out of step with the 'joie de vivre' centers of Osaka and Kyoto. In fact, natives of Nagoya will readily admit this. There is no local pride...save for the fact that it has had the dubious honour of carrying the mantle 'Most Boring City in Japan' for many years running. Had it not been my (ex) wife's hometown, I definitely would have found a better place to hunker down.
The two years that I shuttled in to join the Osaka Halloween fray, word through the grapevine was that the place to be was Kiyobashi Station, at 7pm...Kiyobashi being the appointed gateway to the Kanjo-sen...a large, bustling station at the confluence of a few separate train lines, and a lively entertainment district, full of bars, clubs, restaurants and all night goings-on. That was where the gathering and 'boarding call' would take place....and the rail party to end all rail parties would commence. As I may have previously mentioned, Japan has pretty lax laws regarding the consumption and acquisition of alcoholic beverages. 24-7, basically, anything goes. Wanna crack a beer or 10 on the subway? Go ahead. 6 in the morning? No problem. For those of you not in the know about these things, loop line trains travel around the inner city in a perpetual circle-course - meaning there is no terminal station. One could reasonably pass out or die on one of these things, and just keep being trucked around town in endless circles until rigor mortis has set in. I myself have had occasion to sleep my way through significant distances on post party train journeys, only to wind up well and truly lost in some far flung location by the time I came to...but, yay, those are different stories for another entry.
Anyways, as I was saying, at some point in the early 90's, some twisted gaijin had the bright idea that the loop line would be the perfect venue to have a real, no holds barred, costumed Halloween piss up...to, you know, take the edge off the homesickness, duck paying expensive cover charges for more controlled parties at bars or nightclubs, and maybe give the local population a sample of what an unbridled, no holds barred, savage down-home pumpkin buster REALLY looked like.
So...what did it look like? Anarchy. Mardi-Gras. Pandemonium. The inmates over-running the asylum. The outlandishly costumed throng of predominantly foreign origin (with a few younger, more outside leaning or thrill seeking J-folk peppered in) packed a succession of trains as they pulled into and out of Kiyobashi Station. Yes indeed...there was drinking, smoking, chanting, screaming, carousing...all to the abject horror of the local J-natives, who really had absolutely no idea what had befallen them on what they expected to be just another routine commute. As the train rumbled into each station, and the doors slid open, the deal was that everyone was supposed to rush out on to the platform, then race down to the next door, and re-board the train before the doors automatically slid shut, and the journey resumed, on down to the next stop. Needless to say, there were always a few stragglers left behind, but there was always another train along 5 minutes later, similarly packed out with drunken, belligerent costumed revelers of the non-Japanese variety. Neither the J.R. (Japan Rail) staff or the police seemed to be prepared for this 'pop up party', and it was a scene of gaijin inspired hedonism and abandon without parallel. I guess the closest thing that I can imagine is Mardi Gras...or that big shindig in Brazil...though in comparison, even those seem more orderly and controlled.
It goes without saying that the J- locals were not amused. Osaka people like a party, and are generally a lot less tightly wound than their Nagoya counterparts...but, this hootenanny was beyond the beyond, and it's multi-cultural significance was definitely under appreciated by the natives.
Both Halloweens that I partook ended in smears and blurs. Separated from my original group, having not made it back on the train in time, I would end up in some undisclosed location, at some raging club party with a random group of costumed internationals, or getting cross-eyed on extracurriculars in a restaurant bathroom with some similarly freakishly attired new pals from far flung corners of the globe. Somehow I'd end up wandering sideways into members of the original away team in the wee hours of the morning, and the festivities would carry on and on, well into the following afternoon...with yours truly finally winding up either in a crumpled heap on the Shinkansen back to Nagoya, or stone cold unconscious in a corner on some gracious soul's tatami mat floor, face still smeared in warpaint, sleeping it off until three the following afternoon.
I hear that by 2007 or 08, the gig was finally up. The Osaka Prefectural Police started sending blanket emails out to every English school, college and university in the Kansai area, notifying whoever was entertaining the idea of perhaps getting gussied up, grabbing some libations, and heading for the Kanjo-sen, that they would basically be arrested on sight. The party was well and truly over. Apparently the police presence around the Kajno-sen line stations on October 31st is now a thing to behold. I also heard that several years past the original party's peak, the Tokyo crowd had tried to duplicate the Osaka festivities on the Yamanote Line, which runs a loop around inner city Tokyo...but the cops were ready, and brought their heel down quickly when the goings on started interrupting the workaday routine and timely runnings of the trains. The local J-natives love their workaday routines. These routines are sacred, and the basis of the cogs and wheels that run their lives, and society. Lord help the proverbial 'spanner in the works'. If you interrupt, or stop the smooth and efficient running of the trains, you'd best be laying on the tracks, a kaleidoscope vision of limbs, entrails and guts everywhere - or there will be hell to pay.
Years later, the idea of heading out in costume on Halloween has lost it's appeal. After all this, it couldn't be anything but anti-climactic...and the idea of rubbing shoulders with scores of ironic, bearded, lumberjack shirted and tattooed twenty-something hipsters and millennials, gyrating dutifully to the DJ'd EDM du jour....well...no, thanks. I'll stick to something more age appropriate. Like laundry.
The Osaka Kanjo-sen madness was really kind of emblematic of a whole, wild, vibrant gaijin scene over here from the late 80's straight through to the mid-naughties. A real wild west type scenario. The type of people that came over here...the class of gaijin...was different then to the types that you see now. The millennial crowd are a different breed. Looking back, most of the old crew that I ran with are gone now. A few died over here. A few went to jail, or were deported. Some moved back to pick up where they left off at home. Others went on to teach in other countries...while another handful actually stuck it out and settled down on Planet Japan, had families, and carved out nice careers at institutions of higher learning or 'pay to play' English schools. I guess I fit somewhere in the middle. A vet, and very literally, the last of my gang. I hung out so long after the party finished that there was literally no home to go back to when I was finally done. Yet....here I am. Still. Glad I made it in one piece, and with the good fortune of a lovely wife...and a lot of perspective. I still miss the old gang from time to time.
Brings me back to a line from one of my film faves...
"No matter where you go...there you are" - (Buckaroo Banzai)
And here I am.
Happy Halloween.
