Speed Tribes: Days and Night's with Japan's Next Generation [9780060926656]

Overview

Behind the neon facade of Tokyo’s economic bubble lies a shadowy underworld of motorcycle gangs, mobsters, and renegade youth.

This foray into the often violent subcultures of Japan dramatically debunks the Western perception of a seemingly controlled and orderly society.

The volume examines the consequences of the late-eighties economic bubble through the lives of young outcasts, motorcycle thieves, and low-level racketeers.

Greenfeld tracks Tokyo’s frantic prosperity down into the alleyways where teenage hot-rodders and disaffected youth carve out their own illicit territories. Tokyo’s neon-lit entertainment districts and suburban industrial towns provide the backdrop for a restless generation that rejected corporate conformity for life on the urban fringe.

• Youth Culture: Midnight Angels hot-rodders and rival bosozoku gangs stage deafening, slow-speed motorcycle runs across Tokyo expressways in defiance of riot police.
• Organized Crime: Low-ranking Yakuza syndicates operate covert telephone betting parlours out of cramped Fukagawa apartments while managing corporate extortion schemes.
• True Crime: Suburban teenage crews in Ohana-jaya use modified Makita power drills to steal high-end motorbikes for industrial chop shops.
• Counterculture: Reclusive otaku hackers, club-hopping hostesses, and adult video crews carve out parallel lives in the shadowy margins of the metropolis.