Are Pokémon Gold and Silver covers the same in Japan and the West?

The cover Pokémon are the same. Gold and Silver were the first games in the series to use Legendary Pokémon as their mascots, and Ho-Oh fronts Gold while Lugia fronts Silver in both Japan and the West; Suicune does the same for Crystal in both regions. At the level of the image a buyer remembers, the boxes agree.

Everything around the mascot differs by region. The Japanese boxes belong to the Pocket Monsters line, carrying that branding and Japanese typography, while the Western boxes carry the yellow Pokémon logo and English taglines, on boxes shaped and finished for their own markets. The two families of packaging are documented as pairs in this entry's gallery, pictured wherever a verified image is available.

One Western quirk is preserved in Bulbapedia's trivia: the American Silver box is one of only three in the series, alongside Red and Yellow, where the English Pokémon logo is partially covered by the mascot's art, in this case by Lugia's crest.

A note of method, because this Library holds itself to it: the precise compositional differences between the Japanese and Western layouts are described here only where the sources state them in words. Where they do not, the boxes are pictured side by side and the images make the argument.