After Halloween, my bets are that probably Thanksgiving is going to be imported. With the penchant for importing just the fun-looking customs on the surface for whatever festivities, there’s a chance the Japanese are going to want turkey.
Turkey has a lot of health benefits like low fat and fighting cancer that people obsess over, as well as being fairly inexpensive, so once the name recognition reaches critical mass, the Japanese turkey meat market will surely take off!

fg,
I meant the two were similar in their original meanings, of the spirits of the dead coming back to visit the living.
But yes, as you say, the commercialized bonanza that Halloween is today has little in parallel with Obon.

I really hope not. I would like something to go the other way – maybe Americans could start doing something for Tanabata?

It has nothing to do with evil spirits and goblins and fairies like the Celtic Samhain nor the Catholic All Hallows eve, and nothing to do with partying to death.

Halloween in America is a lot of fun especially for kids, I agree. But it’s only a consumer thing in Japan, just like Christmas and Valentine’s day. What’s coming next, Thanks giving and St. Patricks day?

Frankly, America has Halloween down right. I don’t like it when people look at the obvious things a culture does and assume there’s no actual meaning to it. I love American Halloween- not necessarily the candy, but the sheer feeling American Halloween has. It’s completely different from that found in Japan

I’ve only actually worked and lived in Japan for the past few years, but even so, I’ve had the suspicion that I’m seeing a big increase in how often I see things like “trick-or-treating” being mentioned in various texts, as well as Halloween-themed candy popping up in convenience stores in the past year or so. The article James posted here backs that suspicion up with numbers.

And I was just guessing that this sudden boom could be at least partially attributable to the constant promotional force by Disney combined with the spread of the cosplay culture in the past decade.
Though it could be just a culmination of the slow trickle of imported American culture over the past half-century, I was guessing that the recent spike to be caused by the lowering of the bar in dressing up under the pretext of cosplay.

Halloween is an excuse to have some fun…I don’t see the problem.

It’s basically two things that pushes Halloween – fun and profit. Since there isn’t any real religion tied up with Halloween except for some Christians hating it, it’s an easy holiday to push and make money from in food, drinks, costumes, parties, greeting cards, movies, TV shows, commercials, etc…

The fun factor is that for kids its a chance to dress up and get candy. For adults its the same thing except the added benefit of seeing cute Japanese girls in sexy Halloween outfits.

Halloween easily fits in with Japan because Japan already has a ghostly tradition and a belief of spirits returning with is the core of the original Halloween or Samhain as it was known in Pagan-Celtic Ireland. Japanese elements have long been a part of Halloween in America providing some of the most favorite costumes like ninja, anime characters, samurai, godzilla, etc…

Anyway with the economy the way it is, Halloween is good thing more than ever to get people spending and circulating cash.