Christmas in Japan is a tradition with components that closely mirror those of the western world. Makes sense, as that’s where the green and red color combination, pine trees and KFC Chicken (a Japanese Yuletide staple) all originate. So too the end-of-the-year televised onslaught that rivals the holiday programming blitz in the US (quite a few vintage Christmas commercials from Japan, including several KFC spots, can be viewed in the YouTube compilation video CHRISTMAS SPECIAL, as can several of the programs mentioned below).
There are also TV specials not dissimilar to those profiled in my December 2019 posting about stateside holiday television. Nobody should get their hopes up too high about the quality of these programs, as none are in any way exceptional. At their best, however, they’re striking and gloriously idiosyncratic, as the following overview of holiday episodes from the 1970s, 80s and 90s (my preferred decades) should make clear.
We’ll start with what I feel is the best of the lot: episode 39 of SPACE SHERIFF SHAIDER, “The Masked Dancing Choir”/“Kamenga Odoru Seikatai,” broadcast on December 21, 1984. In this episode the title character (Hiroshi Tsuburaya), a cybernetically enhanced college student tasked with defending the Earth from extraterrestrial threats, uses his special skills to leap onto the ledge of a high rise and play Santa, delivering a birdcage to a friend’s kids. But the “birds” in the cage turn into scary monsters that grow to horrific sizes, leading to the inference that “Somebody wants to ruin Christmas!”
That somebody is the Great Emperor Kubilai (Shôzô Îzuka), the primary agent of Fuuma, a contingent of scumbags looking to take over the universe. Kubilai leads a procession of kidnapped children he’s transformed into black cloak wearing creeps to his base camp, an underground room festooned with a crucified Santa Claus figure (which to add to the desecration is hung upside down). Shaider and his go-go boot wearing GF Annie (Naomi Morinaga) spring into action, using a giant drill to enter Fuuma’s lair and kick lots of ass, much of it occurring in the psychedelic “Strange Realm,” in which Fuuma’s monsters exert far more power than they do in the not-so-strange one.
Some mighty striking images are contained in this show, such as the eerie sight of the Fuuma’d band of black clad children running in slow motion down a city street and the final image of those now de-Fuuma’d kids singing “Joy to the World” on the steps of a church, which in its symmetric precision and stark black-and-white color combination is as eerily bizarre as anything seen in the Strange Realm.
More retro weirdness can be found in episode 38, “Resurrection! Father of Ultra”/“Fukkatsu no Urutora no
Chichi,” of ULTRAMAN ACE, broadcast on December 22, 1972. It offers an unapologetic dose of kaiju insanity with “Ultra Father” (Tetsurô Sagawa) taking the form of a very samurai-esque Santa Claus who, in true Ultraman fashion, is able to increase his mass exponentially (the square cube law, stating that with the doubling of an object’s mass its weight is cubed, doesn’t appear to have been respected), which comes in handy when a giant demon emerges from a large snowman that appears outside an orphanage on Christmas Eve. The resulting melee sees numerous model buildings get smashed, stomped and set on fire before Ultraman Ace inevitably saves the day.
Episode 39 of KAMEN RIDER, “Monster Wolf Man’s Huge Murder Party”/“Kaijin Ōkami Otoko no Satsujin Dai Pātī,” broadcast on December 25, 1971, provides some primo grade-B silliness in the form of an army of werewolves focused on a Christmastime world conquest. They’re opposed by the title character’s lookalike partner (Takeshi Sasaki), who with his grasshopper-inspired outfit looks even goofier than the wolfmen opposing him.
SUPER SENTAI episode 45, “The Confused Santa”/“Awatenbô Santa,” broadcast on December 23, 1994, isn’t in the same league as the above. It suffers from obnoxiously choppy editing that tries to emulate the tried-and-untrue music video formula and a sense of campy self-awareness that places it in a far less edifying
category than the endearingly sincere likes of ULTRAMAN and KAMEN RIDER. It does, however, contain some interesting inversions of traditional Christmas lore.
It’s about the evil Ghost Centipede stealing Santa’s delivery van (apparently the sleigh was out of commission) so it can create a “Christmas from Hell” by distributing presents packed with dangerous insects. The heroes, a color-coded jumpsuit wearing band of superheroes (known in the US as the MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS), head to Santa’s village, a mansion where numerous men dressed as Santa Claus are lorded over by the real thing, a.k.a. the “elder.” It seems Ghost Centipede has infiltrated the village and possessed the elder, forcing the Rangers to spring into action and make things right.
Next we enter the anime realm for a holiday two-fer: episode 35 of MACROSS, “Romanesque,” broadcast on June 19, 1983, and its Americanized version ROBOTECH, in which the episode was rendered as “Season’s 
Greetings” on April 19, 1985. The differences between the two are indicated by the titles, with “Romanesque” using the holiday season as a backdrop for a tale of orgiastic destruction amid doe-eyed heroes and an evil robotic Santa Claus, and “Season’s Greetings” making Christmas the bane of the episode, with a highly insistent narrator offering intonations like “early Christmas morning, a time of great excitement and jubilation for children and their families everywhere” that don’t appear in Japanese language original. One curious element, however, is identical to both versions: A climactic “Silent Night” singalong in a church, presented in an oddly solemn, reverential manner.
More anime madness occurs in SAMURAI PIZZA CATS episode 47, “The Cheese Who Stole Christmas”/“Nyankii Santas Fly Through the Air” (broadcast December 25, 1990). FYI, this series’ English version, taken from the Japanese series KYATTO NINDEN TEYANDEE, substituted the original dialogue with smart-assed pop culture inflected banter, rendering what was said to be a straightforward comedic series into
an overt parody of anime conventions.
That’s quite evident in “The Cheese Who Stole Christmas,” which opens on Christmas morning. The show’s cat protagonists (“The heroes who always wear fur”), who deliver pizzas in their working life, joyously open presents while their major antagonist “The Big Cheese” spies on them and plots evil deeds. The BC ends up impersonating Santa Claus and even flies a sleigh across the sky; stupidity ensues, rendered even stupider by the smart-assed English dialogue (although from what I’ve seen the Japanese language original isn’t much more intelligent, or intelligible).
From there, alas, the Japanese holiday TV pickings are pretty slim. Episode 10 of PATLABOR, “Eve’s Trap”/“Ivu no Wana,” from December 20, 1989, begins with some Christmas imagery but then devolves into standard sci fi anime silliness.
Likewise: episode 24 of SABER RIDER AND THE STAR SHERIFFS, “The Monarch Supreme”/“Hoshizora no Kurisumasu Karoru,” broadcast on October 15, 1987. The Christmas element of this one doesn’t come into play until the final scenes, in which, following a not-entirely-coherent riot of laser beams and explosions in outer space, the show’s heroes are given a royal fete involving a large Christmas tree. The holiday import of episode 64 of GATCHAMAN, “A Christmas Present of Death”/“Shi no Kurisumasu Purezento” (from December 16, 1973) is even harder to discern. The episode involves a gaggle of annoying kids who become involved in a space war, the particulars of which, not being familiar with the GATCHAMAN cannon, were completely lost on me, and I can’t say I’m feeling too deprived.