Does Japan Believe in Ghosts?

And What IS 'Belief', Anyway...?

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Halloween is here. Are you scared yet?

Here in the UK the answer is - regretfully - ‘no.’ It’s the usual tidal wave of orange and black plastic, plus some cobwebs and flickery pumpkin lanterns.

Mind you, for those of us forced by our children to go trick-or-treating, it is a little unnerving: the combination of Haribo and bad jokes with skulls, skeletons, blanched corpse-faces and blood. I sympathise with Christian churches throwing ‘light parties’ around this time of year as an alternative: choosing illumination over fake darkness.

Does Japan do all this better? Yes.

In big cities like Tokyo, Halloween is an upbeat, alcohol-fuelled cosplay extravaganza (which nervous authorities in places like Shibuya have started shutting down). It’s kept completely separate from Japan’s day of the dead, Obon, which is held in the summer. This is a time when the border between our world and the next becomes thin and the spirits of deceased relatives return for a visit.

Those spirits are greeted, when they arrive, not with panicked screaming or sugar-heavy treats. Instead, the living gather at graveyards to tidy and sweep, drink together and have fun. ‘Bon Odori’ dancing, originally a means of welcoming the dead, features spectacular costumes, music and routines.

People celebrate at their homes, too, lighting fires to guide the spirits towards them. Miniature animals or vehicles are fashioned from vegetables - toothpicks stuck into cucumbers or aubergines - so that the spirits have something to ride on, or in, when they return to the other world.

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Bon Odori at a festival near Nikko, which I visited this summer. At some festivals the dancing is professional and highly practiced. Here, everyone in the community is invited to take part.

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I found my first Obon a little strange. The idea of drinking alcohol in a graveyard, while laughing and letting off fireworks, seemed more the kind of thing that naughty teenagers might get up to. It was a while before I appreciated the idea that a gentle, open playfulness is actually a very good way to approach the biggest questions in life. Joy, meanwhile, is a natural response to remembering or re-encountering loved ones.

But which is it? Remembrance - or re-encounter?

The first research interviews I conducted in Japan, touching on questions like these, were a complete failure. Employing an interview technique unconsciously borrowed from the famously harsh British broadcast journalist Jeremy Paxman, I was convinced that if I just kept hammering away with my questions then my interview subjects would eventually give up the goods.

I got absolutely nowhere, as you might expect. So I turned for answers to my Japanese girlfriend. Little did she know that this was the beginning of 20 years and counting of being made to serve as my one-woman survey of Japanese public opinion.

Sadly, that didn’t work either. But it taught me some valuable lessons about what - and how - people believe in Japan, when it comes to life, death, spirits and the afterlife.