In the wake of last October’s fatal crowd crush in Seoul, South Korea, city officials in Shibuya, Tokyo, have let it be known this year that the Halloween street party is over. In years past, the area around Shibuya Crossing would overflow with a crowd so thick that it could leave you shoulder-to-shoulder with costumed people, swaying back and forth as if in a game of tug-of-war. That’s what happened to me, anyway, when I first wandered into the crowd back in 2015. A serious bottleneck occurred on the sidewalk between the Q-Front building (pictured above) and the subway exit outside it. Imagine the feeling of being almost knocked off your feet and trampled in a slow-motion stampede.
Considering that, it’s understandable why Shibuya would want to keep itself from becoming a danger zone like Seoul’s Itaewon neighborhood last year. During the day, you can still see the occasional guy dressed like Spider-Man hanging around the crossing. However, signs like the one above are currently up all around Hachiko Square, walling off the statue of the titular dog completely. Security personnel nudge people along to keep them from loitering or leaning on the signs, some of which trumpet the message, “You can't see Hachiko from Saturday, October 28, to Wednesday morning, November 1.”
On a separate but perhaps not entirely unrelated note, the popular Tsutaya and Starbucks in Q-Front, with their windows overlooking the crossing, are also due to close on Halloween for an extended renovation period lasting into 2024.