『人類学研究所 研究論集』第１号（2013）

The Public Perception of the Bōsōzoku in Japan
Andreas Riessland

Keywords
Japan; bōsōzoku; motorized society; youth subcultures; juvenile delinquency; media
discourse; cultural norms and deviance.

Introduction

In Japan, whenever talk turns to my research interest in the bōsōzoku
subculture, the reactions of my conversation partners tend to be surprisingly alike,ranging from amused curiosity to plain incomprehension why any respectable person
could possibly be interested in these social misfits. I see this narrow range of reactions
as an indicator of the significance of the bōsōzoku subculture as a social phenomenon inmodern day Japan, as it emphasizes how efficient and resilient this subculture has beenin establishing itself within the public consciousness as a focal point of dislike andanxiety. For regardless of my conversation partners’ personal backgrounds, almost all ofthem seemed to agree that bōsōzoku are an altogether undesirable part of society –criminal, violent and dangerous.
Interestingly, I did not find a single one among them whose opinion about theinherently violent character of the bōsōzoku was based on actual first-hand experience.
Nobody I spoke to had ever witnessed, let alone been the victim of, bōsōzoku violence,and no one had experienced any encounters with bōsōzoku that went beyond the twomost common forms of bōsōzoku harassment, being forced to pull one’s car over during abōsō drive-by, or having one’s sleep shattered by their motorbikes’ insufferable noise.
The few people I met who knew (or at least knew about) individual members ofbōsōzoku groups tended to portray them as immature and unruly youths who had lots ofhazardous and hare-brained ideas, yet they all dismissed the notion that the behaviourof these youngsters should be called criminal. But when it came to “the bōsōzoku” ingeneral, these people, too, regarded them as intrinsically violent and dangerous.1
So if it wasn’t personal experience that formed people’s notions of the bōsōzoku
This attitude is far from exceptional, it can also be found, for example, in thestatements of police officers and social workers about bōsōzoku, in Chūgoku 2003:
52-53.
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Research Papers of the Anthropological Institute Vol.1 (2013)subculture’s inherent criminality, what was it then? Where did these notions comefrom? Generally, two sources of information stood out in people’s narrations: One wasplain hearsay, following the urban legend pattern,2 with people referring to instances ofbōsōzoku brutality and delinquency which, as they were quick to maintain, had actually
happened to an acquaintance of someone they personally knew and whose credentials
were, in their minds, beyond doubt. The other, far more significant channel forestablishing and consolidating their opinions on bōsōzoku violence and delinquency wasthrough the commercial media – articles in magazines, radio and TV reports and, mostprevalent and influential, news reports in the country’s daily papers. In short, people
seemed to experience the menace of bōsōzoku violence more keenly in the virtual realityof their minds than they did out on the streets.
１．The bōsōzoku – an outline

So what exactly does the term “bōsōzoku” stand for, and how did the bōsōzoku
subculture come to be the epitome of juvenile delinquency? In Japan’s discourse on law
enforcement (for example in the National Police Agency’s annual white papers),“bōsōzoku“ is used as a generic term for motorized groups of (mostly) male adolescents
who engage in disruptive and dangerous conduct in traffic, disregarding traffic rules
and endangering their own as well as other people’s safety. Outside of the legal andadministrative framework, though, the term carries a different set of connotations that
focus less narrowly on issues of traffic violation and more on the above mentioned
aspects of harassment, menace and the threat of physical violence.
According to Endō (2010: 106-107), the term “bōsōzoku” was coined in 1972, andit quickly gained nationwide circulation, but the motorized youth subculture that it
refers to had been around at least since the late 1950s. When the first groups of young
motorcyclists appeared on Japan’s roads, their conduct on and off the roads wascertainly not much different from that of their successors. But they were few in number
and traffic on Japan’s roads was a fraction of what it would be in later years, so whilethese early biker groups may occasionally have been perceived as a nuisance, they did
not represent the challenge to society that later generations were to be. Unless they
were involved in serious accidents, Japan’s young motorcyclists were not likely toreceive any media attention then.
But in the 1960s, this situation changed fast: rising income levels and mass
motorization made small to medium size motorcycles affordable even on a young
worker’s wages or a student’s income from part-time work, and accordingly, the number

For an exhaustive study into the characteristics and workings of urban legends, see
Brunvand 2002.
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『人類学研究所 研究論集』第１号（2013）of young drivers on the roads swelled exponentially. This was most apparent in Japan’s
inner city areas where on the weekends, hundreds of young drivers began to congregatewith their cars and motorbikes, to show off their vehicles and their driving prowess, toengage in informal (and illegal) racing competitions, to see and to be seen.
Judging from the visual materials at hand, 3 the get-togethers of thesekaminarizoku (as the press was quick to label them) were spectacular events: vibrantand noisy manifestations of youthful vitality that offered Japan’s young generation awelcome opportunity to escape the narrow confines of their everyday life, to join in thecompetition for recognition among their peers and, maybe, to score with the opposite
gender. In the cities of Japan, gatherings of noisy and unruly adolescents were nothing
new, but motorization gave these events a substantially different quality: For one,vehicle ownership came to play a key role in the young generation’s social competitivegame. In addition, motorization allowed people a much wider active range, which meantthat groups from far outlying areas were now able to join in the downtown night-time
action. Consequently, the weekend gatherings in Japan’s inner cities grew at an
unprecedented scale, and soon, almost every town in Japan became the unwilling hostof similar events. The ensuing media attention further raised the appeal of thesemeetings, and it did not take long for the authorities to decree that these noisy,
disruptive and dangerous displays of adolescent disorderly conduct would no longer betolerated.
Ironically, the authorities’ heavy-handed response only served to aggravate thesituation: on June 17th 1972, attempts by local police to put an end to the night-time
racing meets in central Toyama City resulted in two days of intense rioting, with similar
outbreaks of violence in numerous other cities throughout the following weeks (Endō2010: 107; Nakabe 1979: 227-228). This, along with the increasing rivalries and turf
wars between individual groups, led to a noticeably more aggressive climate among
Japan’s street youth. New groups emerged whose declared purpose was to seek fights
with the police force or with other bōsōzoku groups. The groups’ swelling membershipnumbers (see below) and the growing focus on provoking confrontation also brought
about a new style of bōsō drives: instead of the high-speed inner city chases that had
marked the early days, the groups now focussed on moving along the streets in massconvoys, with maximum noise production and at an irritatingly slow pace, causing
serious disruptions, if not the complete breakdown, of all regular traffic. Due to theirefficiency in raising attention as well as irritation, and due to the obvious difficulties
that the police had in keeping these events in check, these bōsō convoys quickly became
the mainstay of bōsōzoku activities. Throughout the next thirty years, they were to be apermanent fixture of Japan’s road traffic, and the way that most Japanese would cometo experience the bōsōzoku subculture.
3

Fukuda 1980; Toi 2005; Endō 2010; Zeroyon 2011.
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In the mid 1970s, the rivalries between the ever larger bōsōzoku groups resulted
in a series of epic clashes with hundreds of participants which caused Japan’s
lawmakers and law enforcement agencies to implement a series of urgent
countermeasures, hoping to rein in the bōsōzoku groups and to curb their activities.
Consequently, the groups’ membership numbers declined visibly, but at the same time,
the number of groups more than doubled, and Japan’s bōsōzoku subculture became
more populous than ever. In 1982, the police count reached an all time high, with 754

bōsōzoku groups that had altogether 42,510 members. From then on, the number ofgroups and of bōsōzoku members went into a slow but steady decline, and in 2011, theNational Police Agency announced that for the first time since they began keeping
statistics on bōsōzoku activities, the overall number of bōsōzoku on record had dropped
below 10,000 individuals.4 Today, the bōsōzoku problem is just a fraction of what it was
thirty years ago, but as the residents of Nagoya, Hiroshima or the Shonan Coast will
confirm, it still is far from over.

２．Japan’s media and the bōsōzoku

In his landmark study of Japan’s bōsōzoku youth in the 1980s, Sato Ikuyaemphasizes the media’s great influence on the public opinion regarding bōsōzoku, andhe sees two decisive factors at work behind this influence. To him, one is the sheer
volume of media coverage that accompanied the dramatic rise of bōsōzoku activities
throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The other, he says, lies with the overly simplistic
explanatory models on which the press reports usually rely. The media, Sato says,
hardly ever take their analysis of the bōsōzoku phenomenon beyond simple“pathological interpretations” that reduce the complex and heterogeneous bōsōzoku
issue to two simple stereotypes, “either as a cruel and abominable devil or as a pathetic
victim suffering from chronic frustration and anxiety.” (Sato 1991: 74).
Sato conducted his research during the heyday of bōsōzoku activity in Japan,
and since then, the number of bōsōzoku has visibly declined. Consequently,

bōsōzoku-related issues figure less prominently in today’s headlines than they did
throughout the 1970s and 1980s. But a look through Japan’s newspapers reveals that
Sato’s conclusion at the end of the 1980s, that the bōsōzoku “have been ‘exorcised’ or‘expelled’ from media reports” (Sato 1991: 193), was premature: Between September
1986 and May 2011, the term bōsōzoku figured in an altogether 5,569 articles (slightly
more than four articles per week) of the Yomiuri Shinbun, while the Asahi Shinbun’s
writers were even more prolific, with 6,711 articles during this period, averaging morethan five articles per week. Of course, these figures include numerous news reports with
4

Nikkei Shinbun on February 10th, 2011.
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only fleeting reference to the bōsōzoku topic, but when refining the search withadditional keywords, the correlation of the term bōsōzoku with delinquency andviolence in the media becomes obvious: Almost 50% of all articles (Asahi: 3,141 art.;
Yomiuri: 2,642 art.) paired the term bōsōzoku with “arrest” (逮捕). Next in line were
“offence” (違反; Asahi: 2,108 art.; Yomiuri: 1,604 art.) and “crime” (犯; Asahi: 1,416 art.;
Yomiuri: 1645 art.), followed by “injury” (傷; Asahi: 1,519 art.; Yomiuri: 1,274 art.) and“theft” (盗; Asahi: 1,148 art.; Yomiuri: 1,071 art.), while still about one in ten articles
linked bōsōzoku with “murder” (殺; Asahi: 757 art.; Yomiuri: 647 art.)
Naturally, this focus on bōsōzoku brutality and deviance is only to be expectedfrom Japan’s dailies – after all, it is in the papers’ nature to give priority to news items
that deliver a catching headline and riveting reading. From a publisher’s point of view,
this may make perfect sense, but for the common perception of the bōsōzoku topic in
Japan, this focus has had lasting consequences. For with the fixation of the country’s
main news sources on the criminal and violent aspects of the bōsōzoku subculture, it is
no wonder that in Japan’s public discourse, the two terms “bōsōzoku” and “juvenile
delinquent” have become virtually interchangeable.
Ultimately, the notion of the bōsōzoku’s inherently delinquent character has
become ingrained in the public consciousness, and the media themselves have come toadopt it and, as Sato points out, have repeatedly used the label “bōsōzoku” to describe
juvenile delinquents in incidents which, on closer look, had nothing to do with any

bōsōzoku involvement (Sato 1991: 194-195). A corresponding tendency can be observedin the media’s use of the term “bōsōzokufū” (“bōsōzoku-like”), used in crime reporting todescribe particular people or vehicles. Here, too, the mental association of bōsōzoku andjuvenile delinquency in general is set to work both ways: simply by introducing the term“bōsōzoku” in the news item, the media steer their audience’s perception towards awhole train of connotations that go far beyond the described incident. Inversely, theyalso further consolidate their customers’ mental equation of bōsōzoku with juvenile
delinquency, even though the described incident may not be bōsōzoku-related at all.
Similar tendencies marked a great part of Japan’s TV reporting on bōsōzoku, inparticular in the so-called wide shows where the viewer was customarily treated to abarrage of tense images – close-ups of policemen’s determined faces in quick succession
with shaky footage of young hoodlums running wild, replete with yells and curses, theinfernal noise of their machines, provocative and intimidating postures, frightened
bystanders, scuffles with the police, night-time high speed chases, and eventually thearrest of the cowed young misfits.5 Usually, the dramatic visuals were augmented by aTV source materials are much harder to come by than those in the newspaper sector.
But recently, a growing number of video clips offering TV footage from the 1980s and1990s have become available through online video channels. Unfortunately, many ofthese clips supply no hint at the original source, which makes it hard to utilize them in
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deep and sonorous male voiceover that supplied facts and numbers and added thenecessary documentary touch to the images of a youth out of bounds. But in view of thedisplayed violence and aggressive posing, the question needs to be asked how much of it
was actually inspired by the presence of the media.
According to Sato (1991: 94-97), the idea of press and media attention was close
to irresistible for many of his informants, and to read about their exploits in the papers
was a source of personal pride and satisfaction to them. This eagerness for media
exposure is also evident in Nakabe’s interviews, in the hurt pride of two Osaka bōsōzoku
over the media’s exclusive focus on the Kantō bōsōzoku (Nakabe 1979: 60, 201). The
appeal of media attention is closely linked with one of the core tenets of bōsōzoku action,summed up in the term medatsu – to be visible, to attract attention, to be publicly
noticed.6 For Nakabe’s as well as Sato’s bōsōzoku informants, medatsu serves as one ofthe driving forces behind their actions, and many of the core features of bōsō rides – theinfernal noise, the risky driving manoeuvres, the spectacular design of the bikes and the
choice of the routes down populated inner city streets – serve to increase the audience
for their spectacle and thus enhance their experience of being at the centre of attention.
For it is only through the presence of an audience that many of their activities gain
meaning, and the fact that the attention of their reluctant audience is not based on
admiration but on animosity and fear seems to be of little concern. On the contrary, tobe seen as potentially dangerous is very much in their interest, as an established means
to gain deference not only among their peers but also from society at large. Regarding
the media’s depiction of the bōsōzoku, both sides came to profit from such images of
unbridled rage, the camera crews in search of thrilling footage just as much as thebōsōzoku who were well aware of the attention that a well-choreographed spectacle ofviolence and chaos could earn them7.
an academic context. Nevertheless, they offer a good overall insight into thedramatization techniques that marked much of the crime reporting on Japanese TV
throughout this period.
6 However, in certain facets of the bōsōzoku subculture, public scrutiny is evidently not
wanted. One of these concerns the sensitive relationship between bōsōzoku gangs andorganized crime (Chūgoku 2003: 91), another is the identity of bōsō riders. Face masksthat cover mouth and nose are a popular item during bōsō rides, as the majority ofparticipants do not want to be identified. (Keisatsuchō 1994: 276). For Sato’s informants,
it is important that Japan’s juvenile penal code prohibits the media from revealing theiridentities (Sato 1991: 160).
7 Findeisen and Kersten (1999: 103-105) have identified the same phenomenon in theGerman media’s approach towards youth violence: as spectacular events raise viewer
numbers, and spectacular footage gets broadcast, focus is on the visual appeal of theevents before the camera, and how to enhance it for maximum marketability. Should
the events offer too little of this appeal, it may be necessary to amplify it throughappropriate means. The video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzw6IjHCCg4
highlights a particularly obvious example of such viewer manipulation: Throughout thevideo’s first minute, the commentator describes an unsettling scenario which is in stark
contrast to the visuals where everything – the particularly gaudy bikes of the juvenile206

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But the news department was not the only media sector to profit from theattention which the images of destructive bōsōzoku anarchy were able to raise. Fromthe mid 1970s on, the entertainment industry began to tap into this market with asteady release of bōsōzoku-themed films and TV dramas. Some of these, like thelong-running Shōnan Bakusōzoku series, were blends of action and comedy. But for
their greater part, from the Toei Studios’ 1976 Bakuhatsu! feature films to the 2012production Bakugyaku Kazoku, they focused on straightforward action, with anabundance of daring car and motorbike chases and confrontations between rivals that
habitually end in spectacular outbreaks of violence. The bōsōzoku manga production
was, if anything, even more prolific, with storylines that tended to follow one or theother of the above two patterns, either humorous adventures of a bunch of comical
antiheroes or, more frequently, variations on the ever recurring pattern of epic clashes
between good and evil, represented by bōsōzoku protagonists with greatly exaggerated
physical features and a superhuman ability to withstand physical abuse.
The bōsōzoku film production often fed directly off the manga market, and it wascommon for successful manga storylines to be adapted quickly for the TV or cinema
screen, generally under the same name as the original print version. Of the above
productions, both Shōnan Bakusōzoku and Bakugyaku Kazoku are examples of thismarketing approach. The common denominator for pretty much all of thisbōsōzoku-themed entertainment was its fixation on the belligerent and criminal aspectsof the bōsōzoku subculture, i. e. accident-prone reckless driving, petty crime, offensive
language, aggressive posturing and grandstanding, and plenty of physical violence.8
Usually, the cast lineup was similarly formulaic and one-dimensional, with little, if any,
character development throughout the story. Both films and manga relied greatly on the
reproduction of established notions about bōsōzoku brutality, delinquency and disrepute
and, by doing so, essentially reinforced these notions among their readers and viewers.
Nevertheless, the influence of bōsōzoku manga and films on the general attitude
towards bōsōzoku was relatively small when compared to the impact of TV, magazines
and the daily papers. This was due to the fact that both manga and films targeted avery specific audience of mainly young males with a certain affinity to bōsōzoku-related
topics. So while these entertainment products may have reached a large audience inthis particular age and gender bracket, their impact outside of this segment of society
remained comparatively minor.

drivers, their wide grins and their proud posing – points at the staged nature of thisevent.
8 The one exception here is the 1976 film God Speed You! Black Emperor, a refreshingly
unspectacular documentary about a Shinjuku bōsōzoku group’s members and their
bleak everyday lives between family quarrels, run-ins with law enforcement agencies,
in-group conflict, sniffing glue, trying to make some money, but also the cordiality of
their friendship, and the boundless elation during their bike rides (Yanagimachi 1976).
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One more area of media production needs to be looked at is publishing for abōsōzoku audience. This market segment which was formerly shared by the fourmagazines Teens Road, Rider Comic, Young Auto and Champroad, 9 is today theexclusive domain of the only surviving title, Champroad. This magazine is a monthly
publication that covers pretty much all aspects of bōsōzoku interest, and with a press
run of more than 25 years, it can look back on a longer lifespan than many otherJapanese journals. The positive feedback from Champroad’s target audience is evident
in its great share of readership participation: Of the magazine’s close to 300 pages, alarge part is dedicated either to introducing the members of bōsōzoku groups fromamong its readership or to readers’ contributions such as photos, drawings and stories.
But what really sets Champroad as a publication for bōsōzoku apart from the above
publications about bōsōzoku is its approach towards violence: in Champroad’s articles,
references to the violent aspects of the bōsōzoku subculture remain conspicuously
muted. Whenever physical violence makes an appearance in the magazine, it does soeither within a socially sanctioned context such as amateur boxing or martial arts,
within the fictional (and thus “unreal”) framework of manga, or through its negation, as
in the frequent emphatic statements by bōsōzoku or kyūshakai10groups that they do notendorse violence, or in the habitual denouncements of violence in the magazine’s
interviews with present or former inmates of Japan’s penal institutions.11
Nevertheless, the fact that violence, which is so much at the centre of most otherpublications about the bōsōzoku topic, is so expressly rejected in the statements inChamproad, should not be taken as an accurate reflection of the magazine makers’ or
their readership’s actual attitude. After all, the journalists behind the magazine know
very well that any suggestion of Champroad promoting or endorsing violence mightoffer Japan’s law enforcement agencies a legal handhold to restrict the magazine’s
distribution, or even to close it down.
But the illustrations that fill the pages of Champroad speak a different
language: here, signifiers of potential violence are evident, in the ritualized
intimidating postures of the bōsōzoku or kyūshakai members posing for the cameras aswell as in occasional suggestive elements such as a baseball bat attached to a motorbike,or a jutte truncheon peeking from the hilt of a boot. Yet again, it must be asked what
motivated these suggestive displays, whether they are due to people’s actual inclination

For easier comprehension, the names of all four magazines (originally in katakana)
are given in their English version.
10 Recently, many groups particularly of middle age bōsō bike owners use the kyūshakai(vintage vehicle club) label to sidestep the negative connotations associated with theterm bōsōzoku.
11 It is hard to fathom how much of the inmates’ statements is due to honest remorse,and how much of it is lip service so as not to impair their already precarious situation
any further.
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to act violently, or more to their perceived need to gain credibility among their bōsōzoku
peers through a display of the essential tough guy / tough gal image. In short, theconflicting message between the belligerent markers in the visuals and thedenouncement of aggressive conduct in the texts makes it difficult to come to a reliableconclusion about the violent potential in the bōsōzoku groups. To a great part, of course,
this difficulty is also owed to the circumstance that there is no single, definite bōsōzoku
identity. Rather, the bōsōzoku subculture has always consisted of a multifaceted arrayof communities with very divergent interests, from informal circles of friends who are
only interested in their vehicles, to rigidly structured, highly hierarchical organizations
whose foremost concern is the defence of their turf and the violent confrontation with
their perceived enemies. But however great or small the real threat emanating fromthese groups may be, the images in Champroad show that by and large, intimidation
rituals are still a crucial part of the bōsōzoku performance.

３．Today’s situation – what has changed?

Recently, though, changes in the perception of the bōsōzoku subculture havebecome visible. Over the last ten years, there has been a noticeable increase in both film
and print releases about bōsōzoku and related issues such as the yankii youth12, hinting
at a renewed interest in this topic, but with a different focus.
Previously, almost all bōsōzoku-themed publications outside of the bōsōzoku
fanzine market have treated the violence of the bōsōzoku subculture as a sociallydisruptive phenomenon which, in one way or another, needs to be taken care of. In the
more recent publications, the focus is also on the violent aspects of the bōsōzoku
subculture, but calls for finding an answer to this problem are noticeably less vocal.
Instead, the bōsōzoku subject as a whole is being redefined as a constituent part ofJapan’s recent history, and the apprehensive tone that marked many former
publications has largely vanished. Despite the fact that close to 10,000 active bōsōzoku
are still on the road, the bōsōzoku issue is increasingly treated as a matter of the past.
Between 2004 and today, more than twenty DVDs about bōsōzoku have beenreleased in Japan. Published by niche market video companies, they are on the wholerather basic fare: interviews with ex-bōsōzoku reminiscing about their bōsōzoku days,
releases of archival photo and video footage, and low-budget dramatizations ofcelebrated bōsōzoku leaders’ lives, or of the legendary gang fights of the 1970s. Released
as documentaries or, in the latter case, as documentary re-enactments, they claim to

Yankii: groups of rebellious junior and (less frequently) senior high school students
who display their contempt for school authority through confrontational behaviour
provocative breaches open disregard of school regulations and open disobedience.
Truancy, Many bōsōzoku members started out as yankii.
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offer “authentic accounts” (jitsuroku) of the bōsōzoku subculture’s history, but withex-bōsōzoku as both producers and narrators, is should be no surprise that thisauthenticity is strongly coloured by the bōsōzoku community’s view of events.
Like the reports in Japan’s mainstream media, these video productions also
focus predominantly on the violent side of the bōsōzoku story. But whereas themainstream media treat this violence as the bōsōzoku subculture’s most harmful anddestructive feature, the jitsuroku videos employ it as one of the decisive components of
their bōsōzoku narrative: for them, fighting is not only a valid means of settling conflicts
between rival groups, it is also a key element for bōsōzoku groups to establish andmaintain their internal structure, as it affords their members a chance to prove theirvalue to the group and to display the qualities that are propagated as the core virtues ofthe bōsōzoku – fighting spirit, toughness, honour and loyalty. Couched in an
appropriately elated language, the nihilist destructivism that coloured the stories of
Nakabe‘s interview partners (Nakabe 1979) now becomes a narrative of the heroic.
Meanwhile, the less flattering aspects of the bōsōzoku issue such as traffic accidents,
substance abuse or petty crime remain unmentioned. Given the low-budget character ofthese productions and their focus on a special interest topic, it is unlikely that they will
ever receive much attention beyond their target customer group. But with several
hundred thousand ex-bōsōzoku in Japan today, and countless non-bōsōzoku
sympathizers, the potential audience for these productions with their idealized
representations of bōsōzoku history is nevertheless substantial.
While catering to the same target group, the latest release by Harumoto Shōhei
takes a markedly different approach: his two-volume manga Carolaway also harks backto the early bōsōzoku days, and it also dodges the bōsōzoku subculture’s more sordid
aspects such as sniffing thinner or snatching handbags. But the focus on violent conflict
which marks the jitsuroku videos as well as most other bōsōzoku manga is also missing.
Instead, Harumoto offers his readers a mundane and down to earth impression of what
it was like to be a teenage member of the 1970s’ bōsōzoku scene. His young protagonists
experience no spectacular heroics but rather the adventures of the everyday – dating,hanging out with friends, running into (and running away from) an enemy gang, goingto a rock concert and, of course, the simple joy or riding one’s bike.
The reason behind the popularity of Harumoto’s unpretentious stories is thesame that has driven the growth in the number of kyūshakai – the changing
demographics of Japan’s motorcycle community, including the bōsōzoku scene. For
while the bōsōzoku groups find it more and more difficult to recruit young members,
many middle-aged former bōsōzoku have returned to the arena, driven by a nostalgic
desire to relive the excitement of their bōsōzoku youth. But with considerably more atstake in their present lives than during their teenage years, the reckless abandonmentof their youth is not an option anymore, and they choose other, low risk versions of the210

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bōsōzoku experience, by living their desires out vicariously in the jitsuroku video
reminiscences and Harumoto’s manga, or in the non-controversial, law-abiding weekend
rides with the kyūshakai.
But the return of these ex-bōsōzoku to their teenage pastime is only part of thepicture. Outside of the bōsōzoku community, there is also an obvious growth in interestin the history of Japan’s rebellious youth, with their peculiar customs and theirprovocative appearance. Catering to this interest are two publications from 2009, Yankii

Shinkaron by Nanba Kōji, and Yankii Bunkaron Josetsu, edited by Igarashi Tarō. As thetitles suggest, the main focus of these books is on the characteristics and the ideologiesof the yankii youth, but as the yankii and bōsōzoku subcultures are virtuallyinseparable, there is also extensive coverage of the bōsōzoku issue. Both books are
written for an interested, non-specialist audience with little prior knowledge, and while
they both highlight the links between yankii and more recent youth subcultures inJapan, their main gist is that yankii and bōsōzoku are indeed a matter of the past.
Accordingly, Nanba as well as Igarashi and his co-authors treat the yankii and bōsōzoku
subcultures as a social phenomenon, not a social problem. At the same time, theirmessage also differs markedly from the media productions for a bōsōzoku or
ex-bōsōzoku audience. The latter are clearly promotional: they endorse bōsōzoku culture
and locate it within a positive value system. Nanba and Igarashi, on the other hand,clearly do not endorse the ideology of either yankii or bōsōzoku. Their books areimportant contributions to a better understanding of this subculture and its at times
surprising impact on present day Japan’s society, but even with the insights that these
two books offer, people outside of the bōsōzoku circles are not likely to find much toadmire about the bōsōzoku.
The one exception to this rule is Japan’s art community. Here, the distinctive
style of bōsōzoku subculture has received a genuinely positive echo. For a better
understanding of the art world’s appreciation of bōsōzoku style, it may be necessary
first to highlight several of its core characteristics: In the design of their outfit and of
their vehicles, bōsōzoku display a unique aesthetic that ensures that they will berecognized and categorized immediately, by pretty much anyone. Their customary outfit
is a bricolage of traditional Japanese and Western work clothes, military gear anduniversity ōendan uniforms, adorned with symbols and slogans borrowed from a widearray of contexts including religion, the imperial military, right wing propaganda,
American pop art and street slang, among others. With bōsōzoku motorbikes, many of
their characteristic features such as the elongated backrest, the drawn back handlebaror the raised fairing were originally owed to a particular style of riding, but they soon
took on a greatly exaggerated shape and size with form far superseding function.13
This is taken to an extreme at the bōsōzoku community’s New Year’s gatherings
where vehicles are paraded whose grotesquely oversized backrests, fairings, spoilers
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Again, these design elements serve as potent signals, instantly recognizable and highly
charged with intimations of an irrational, brutal and bewildering power.
The first artists to focus on the rough-edged aesthetics of the bōsōzoku were
photographers such as Yoshinaga Masayuki and Tsuzuki Kyōichi who, each in his own
unique way, brought them from the streets into Japan’s galleries and art bookshops:
With Yoshinaga’s studio portraits of bōsōzoku in full gear and with his bōsō drive action
shots, the artistic quality lies more with the photograph itself, with its composition andthe presentation of its subject. Tsuzuki’s bōsōzoku bike pictures, on the other hand,carry a far more documentary appeal: here, the aesthetic quality lies not with thephotographs as such but rather with their subject matter: extravagant and bizarre
constructions that testify to a raw and unrestrained creativity within an area of Japan’ssociety which, until then, had never been part of the discourse on art or aesthetics. With
the success of Yoshinaga and Tsuzuki, the art market turned its attention also to thework of other, earlier photographers such as Fukuda Fumiaki, whose black and whitephoto anthology of Shinjuku’s late 1960s’ kaminarizoku scene has become a muchsought after collector’s item.
Finally, through the works of Tenmyōya Hisashi, bōsōzoku aesthetics have cometo debut in fine art painting. Tenmyōya, a self-declared “neo nihonga” artist, blends
traditional nihonga techniques with motives that are commonly regarded as garish,
gaudy and vulgar, such as medieval warlords’ coats of armor, irezumi tattoos and, over
and again, the visual language of the bōsōzoku. Tenmyōya’s tenet is that throughout
history, Japan’s aesthetics have at all times contained strong undercurrents of the brash
and the spectacular, and the idea behind his Basara exhibition in 2010

was tohighlight these currents, linking Jōmon pottery design with Tokugawa era architectureand 20th century dekotora truck design, among others. Apart from Tenmyōya’s own
works, the bōsōzoku theme was also present there in an artwork designed by Nakajima
Yasutaka, a typical bōsōzoku motorbike replete with elongated backrest and raised
fairing which, instead of the usual cheap paintjob, carries a coating of top grade,
intricately patterned iro urushi, and a seat with a goza surface.
With their contributions to the 2009 “Outlaw Aesthetics” (autorō bigaku) issue ofthe magazine Bijutsu Techō, Tenmyōya and Nakajima have become part of the ongoingdebate about the borders of art, about which areas of Japan’s creative landscape qualify
as art and which do not, and who has the mandate to set the parameters for this
distinction. Marrying lacquer art or nihonga painting, i. e. techniques which areconsidered quintessential elements of Japan’s cultural heritage, with images taken fromand exhaust pipes can reach several meters in size. These vehicles are often close to
unmanageable for the driver, and they are by no means roadworthy. As the traffic police
is out in force to seize these vehicles, outwitting the police and actually making it to themeeting ground is part of the challenge of these events.
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what is generally considered one of the least desirable parts of Japanese society, they
intentionally break down the arbitrary scholastic distinction between those areas ofcreative production that are promoted as culturally valuable and those that are not. For
them, the bōsōzoku style with all its crude and unpolished connotations delivers theperfect counterpoint.

Conclusion

Appealing to some but offensive to pretty much everybody else, the motorizedsubculture known as the bōsōzoku has been a constituent element of Japan’s society forthe better part of the last fifty years. Among Japan’s youth subcultures, it easily
qualifies as the most long-lived and most influential one, and it has left its imprint on
people’s lives in more than one respect. Laws have been changed,14 festival calendars
have been rearranged, citizens’ groups have been founded and civic ordinances decreed(Chūgoku 2003), all due to the bōsōzoku. In the design of their attire and their vehicles,
they have established a style which is not only unique but also, to put it in advertisingterms, delivers instant brand recognition.
From a marketer’s point of view, the bōsōzoku venture has been a great success:bōsōzoku are universally and instantly identified for what they are, they evoke an
immediate emotional response, and they have developed extremely successful strategies
to realize their objectives – drawing attention and imposing their will on others – at acomparably small risk for themselves and their organizations.
In their efforts to achieve this, their symbiotic relationship with Japan’s media
has been crucial. Not only did the media give extensive coverage to pretty much everybōsōzoku activity, but they made sure to communicate what the bōsōzoku wanted toconvey: that they are violent, unpredictable and dangerous, and that it is best to letthem have their way. This image of the bōsōzoku was the mainstay in pretty much every
media sector, in news reports as well as in movies, TV programs or manga, with the only
exception of the bōsōzoku insider magazines where the violent narrative wasconspicuously absent.
But with the recent changes in bōsōzoku demographics, with shrinking
recruitment numbers and a rising average age, along with an internal shift away frombōsōzoku groups towards the less controversial kyūshakai, the public perception of thebōsōzoku problem is beginning to change. With the diminishing number of bōsōzoku out
on the roads, people outside the bōsōzoku community are less likely these days to havefirst hand encounters with the bōsōzoku. With this, bōsōzoku harassment becomes lessSee for example the 1965 ban on riding pillion on highways, which was lifted only in2005 (JAMA homepage).
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Research Papers of the Anthropological Institute Vol.1 (2013)of an issue on people’s minds, and the discourse can move on towards other, lessdisagreeable aspects of the bōsōzoku subculture.
This is not to say that we are witness to a fundamental re-evaluation of thebōsōzoku stereotype – after all, images of “the bōsōzoku” still provide the typecast forviolent juvenile delinquency. But as the focus of the recent publications about bōsōzoku
for a non-bōsōzoku audience suggests, a growing interest in the non-violent side of thebōsōzoku scene is indeed apparent.
We obviously begin to acknowledge the aesthetic of the spectacular that they
profess, the theatrics in their postures and their bellicose outfits, and the unrestrained
creativity that shines up in the outrageous designs of their vehicles. But we do this froma distance, on paper and in exhibition halls, in the frozen moments of Yoshinaga’s
photos and in Tenmyōya’s clinical surrealism. After all, when contemplating thebōsōzoku’s raw vitality and provocative aesthetic, we want to do so on our terms, nottheirs. And in silence.
References
Books
Brunvand, J. H.
2002 Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, New York: W. W. Norton.
Chūgoku Shinbun Bōsōzoku Shuzaihan (中国新聞暴走族取材班)(ed.)
2003 Tokkōfuku o Kinai Hi – Tachikire Bōsō no Rensa, (The Day Without Tokkōfuku
– Burst the Bōsō Connections), Tokyo: Nihon Hyoronsha. (『トッコウ服を着ない日――断ち切れ 暴走の連鎖』、日本評論社。)
ENDŌ, Natsuki (遠藤 夏輝)
2010 Tōkyō Furyō Shōnen Densetsu – CRS Rengō Tanjō no Jijitsu, (Legends About
Tokyo‘s Deviant Youth – The Real Story of the CRS Union’s Origins), Tokyo:
Million Publishing Inc. (『東京不良少年伝説――CRS 連合誕生の事実』
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Findeisen, H. V. and Kersten, J.
1999 Der Kick und die Ehre – Vom Sinn jugendlicher Gewalt, (The Kick and the
Honour – the Meaning of Juvenile Violence), München: Verlag Antje
Kunstmann.
FUKUDA, Fumiaki (福田 文明)
1980 ’69 Shinjuku Kaminarizoku wa, ima …, (The Shinjuku Kaminarizoku of ’69,
where …), Tokyo: Daisan Shokan. (『’69 新宿カミナリ族は、いま…』、第三書館。)
HARUMOTO, Shōhei (東本昌平)2010 Carolaway 1, Tokyo: Bbmf Magazine. (『Carolaway 1』、Bbmf マガジン。)
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『人類学研究所 研究論集』第１号（2013）2012 Carolaway 2, Tokyo: Bbmf Magazine. (『Carolaway 2』、Bbmf マガジン。)
IGARASHI, Tarō (五十嵐 太郎) (Hg.)
2009 Yankii Bunkaron Josetsu, (Introduction to Yankii Studies), Tokyo: Kawade
Shobo Shinsha. (『ヤンキー文化論序説』、河出書房新社。)
NAKABE, Hiroshi (中部 博) (ed.)
1979 Bōsōzoku 100nin no Shissō, (100 Bōsōzoku‘s Dash), Tokyo: Daisan Shokan. 『( 暴
走族 100 人の疾走』、第三書館。)
NANBA, Kōji (難波 功士)

Yankii Shinkaron – Furyō Bunka wa Naze Tsuyoi, (Yankii Development

2009

Theory – Why is Deviant Youth Culture Strong?), Tokyo: Kobunsha. (『ヤンキー進化論――不良文化はなぜ強い』、光文社。)
SATO, Ikuya (佐藤 郁哉)

Bōsōzoku no Esunogurafii – Mōdo no Hanran to Bunka no Jubaku,

1984(Ethnography of the Bōsōzoku – Fashion Rebellion and Culture’s Shackles),Tokyo: Shin’yōsha KK. (『暴走族のエスノグラフィー――モードの叛乱と文化の呪縛』、新曜社。)
1991 Kamikaze Biker – Parody and Anomy in Affluent Japan, Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.
TENMYŌYA, Hisashi (天明屋 尚)2009 “Autorō Bigaku no Keifu” (Genealogy of Outlaw Aesthetics), Bijutsu Techō

2009/09: 14-33. (「アウトロー美学の系譜」、『美術手帳』2009/09: 14-33。)
2010 Basara, Exhibition catalogue. (『Basara』、美術出版社。)
TOI, Jūgatsu (戸井 十月)(ed.)
2005 Tomerareru ka Oretachi o, (Can You Stop Us?), Tokyo: Daisan Shokan. (『止められるか俺たちを』、第三書館。)
TSUZUKI, Kyōichi
2000 Hell on Wheels, Tokyo: Aspect K.K.
YOSHINAGA, Masayuki (吉永 マサユキ)
2002 Bosozoku, London: Trolley Ltd.
2003 Zoku, (Gangs), Tokyo: Little More. (『族』、リトル・モア。)
Zeroyon Kikaku (零拠企画)( ed.)2011 Bōsō Densetsu,(Bōsō Legends), Tokyo: Kosumikku Shuppan. (『暴走伝説』、コ
スミック出版。)
Films
ENDŌ, Yoshihisa (遠藤吉寿) (producer) and WATANABE, Takao (渡部タカオ)(director)
2010 Za Bōsōzoku, (The Bōsōzoku), Japan: Power Spot Pictures. (『ザ・暴走族』、パ
ワースポッツピクチャーズ。)
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YANAGIMACHI, Mitsuo (柳町 光男)(producer / director)
1976 Goddo Supiido Yū! Black Emperor, (God Speed You! Black Emperor),
Japan: Toei. (『ゴッド・スピード・ユー！Black Emperor.』、東映。)
Online sourcesBlack Emperor
Compilation of the 1969 – 1990 police reports on the Black Emperor website:
http://www.blackemperor.jp/nenpyo.html (last viewed on January 10th, 2013)
JAMA (日本自動車工業会)（Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association）
Baiku no Tanoshisa Hirogaru – Kōsokudōro mo Futarinori ok! (More Fun on the Bike
– Ok to Ride Two Up on Highways)（『バイクの楽しさ広がる 高速道路も二人乗り ok!』）
http://www.jama.or.jp/motorcycle/environment/pdf/ride_in_tandem.pdf(last viewed on January 10th, 2013)
Keisatsuchō (警察庁)(National Police Agency)

Keisatsu Hakusho, (Police White Books) (警察白書)
http://www.npa.go.jp/hakusyo/index.htm (last viewed on January 24th, 2013)216