Walk through the districts of Roppongi, Shibuya, or Marunouchi in Tokyo during mid-December, and you are greeted by a dazzling winter wonderland: millions of sapphire and champagne-gold LED lights drape the boulevard trees, German-style Christmas markets serve hot mulled wine in the shadow of Tokyo Tower, and American Christmas pop classics echo from every department store. Yet for a traveler arriving from Europe or the Americas, Japan’s version of Christmas—known locally as Kurisumasu—holds a fascinating cultural twist. In a country where Christians make up roughly one percent of the population and December twenty-fifth is an ordinary working school and office day, Japan has reinvented Christmas Eve as the ultimate romantic holiday for couples, complete with strawberry shortcake and buckets of fried chicken.
From 1552 Jesuit Mass to Meiji Department Stores
The history of Christmas in Japan actually stretches back more than four hundred and seventy years. The first recorded Christmas celebration on Japanese soil took place on December twenty-fourth, 1552, in Yamaguchi Prefecture, when the Spanish Jesuit missionary Cosme de Torres held a Christmas Mass for newly converted Japanese samurai and farmers. However, after the Tokugawa Shogunate banned Christianity and sealed Japan’s borders in the early seventeenth century, Christmas vanished from public life for over two hundred and fifty years—surviving only in secret among the underground “Hidden Christians” (Kakure Kirishitan) of Kyushu.
Once Japan reopened to the outside world during the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800s, Christmas returned not as a religious crusade, but as an intriguing symbol of Western modernization. In 1900, the high-end food and luxury retailer Meidi-Ya opened a flagship store in Tokyo’s Ginza district and put up large public Christmas displays, teaching urban shoppers the custom of exchanging winter gifts. Following a brief hiatus during World War II, post-war economic recovery and the influence of American cinema and television in the 1960s and 1970s turned Kurisumasu into a permanent fixture of the Japanese winter calendar.
Why Christmas Eve Is Japan’s Valentine’s Day
To understand why young Japanese adults obsess over Christmas Eve (Kurisumasu Ibu), one must contrast it with New Year’s Day (Oshōgatsu, January first to third). In Japan, New Year’s is the sacred, traditional family holiday: everyone travels back to their ancestral hometowns, cleans the house, eats traditional prosperity foods (osechi-ryōri), and visits Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples at midnight with their parents and grandparents.
Because New Year’s belongs strictly to the extended family, Christmas Eve belongs entirely to romance. Beginning in the 1980s during Japan’s economic boom—amplified by Tatsuro Yamashita’s ubiquitous 1983 hit song “Christmas Eve” and glossy lifestyle magazines—December twenty-fourth became the most important date night of the year:
- Months-Ahead Reservations: Couples book tables months in advance at French or Italian skyline restaurants, reserve luxury hotel rooms overlooking Tokyo Bay or Yokohama Harbor, and exchange carefully wrapped romantic gifts such as jewelry, watches, and cashmere scarves.
- Winter Illuminations (Irumineshon): After dinner, couples stroll arm-in-arm through elaborate municipal light installations—such as the Blue Cavern in Shibuya, the Nabana no Sato light tunnels near Nagoya, or Kobe Luminarie—regarding a walk beneath the Christmas lights as the quintessential moment to confess one’s feelings or propose marriage.
“Kentucky for Christmas!” and the Strawberry Shortcake Symbolism
For Japanese families with young children who celebrate at home rather than going out on a romantic date, the Christmas Eve dinner table is dominated by two iconic foods that surprise almost every Western visitor: Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and Japanese Christmas Cake.
How did an American fast-food chicken chain become Japan’s national Christmas dinner? In 1970, Takeshi Okawara—the manager of the very first KFC restaurant in Japan, in Nagoya—overheard foreign expats lamenting that they couldn’t find whole roast turkeys in Japanese supermarkets for Christmas dinner. Inspired, Okawara began marketing a festive “Party Barrel” of fried chicken as a convenient substitute for turkey, and in 1974, KFC Japan launched the national advertising campaign “Kurisumasu ni wa Kentakkī!” (“Kentucky for Christmas!”):
- Two-Month Pre-Orders: The campaign was a runaway marketing triumph. Today, an estimated 3.6 million Japanese families eat KFC on Christmas Eve, pre-ordering special Christmas Party Barrels (bundled with fried chicken, chocolate cake, and commemorative porcelain plates) online in October or standing in line around the block on December twenty-fourth past life-sized statues of Colonel Sanders dressed in a full Santa suit!
- The Red-and-White Strawberry Shortcake: Launched in 1922 by the confectionery company Fujiya, the traditional Japanese Kurisumasu Kēki is not a dense British fruitcake or a French chocolate yule log; it is a feather-light round vanilla sponge cake frosted in pure white whipped cream and topped with bright red fresh strawberries and a marzipan Santa Claus. Beyond tasting delicious, the crimson strawberries against snow-white cream form Kohaku—the auspicious red-and-white color pairing of the Japanese flag that symbolizes joy, celebration, and good luck across Japanese culture.
