This celebration throws everything you thought you knew about Japanese culture out the window.
bosozoku
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Gather around and listen to the tale of Discreet Relationship; the most gosh darn precious biker gang Japan has ever seen.
It’s June again, and that means it’s time for Himeji City in Hyogo Prefecture to hold its annual Himeji Yukata Festival! The three-day event incorporates around 800 businesses and draws in around 200,000 attendees, many of whom are dressed in traditional Japanese summer wear yukata.
It’s a festive time for the whole family, but the Himeji Yukata Festival also has a dark side that city officials and police are looking to stop once and for all. This problem comes in the form of biker gangs known in Japan as bōsōzoku. But these are not just any biker gangs; they’re biker gangs… without bikes.
To most people around the world, the word ‘Yankee’ is used as a (sometimes derogatory) slang term for Americans in general. To most Americans, ‘Yankee’ refers to a person living in one of the six northeastern states of New England. To die-hard Red Sox fans, just hearing the phrase ‘New York Yankees’ is enough to make their blood boil. But that’s a different story…
Curiously enough, the word ‘yankee’ (ヤンキー) has also established itself within the Japanese lexicon, albeit with extremely different connotations. In Japan, a ‘yankee’ conjures up images of juvenile delinquents and biker gangs (more on that later). While this Japanese subculture may have died down considerably since its heyday in the 1980s, one museum in Hiroshima Prefecture has just opened a special exhibit titled ‘Yankee Anthropology’. This exhibit explores Yankee culture from a serious, academic perspective and includes various related realia. If you’ve always been fascinated by this aspect of Japanese subculture, now’s the perfect excuse to head over to Hiroshima!
The Coming of Age Ceremony is the Japanese celebration that officially marks the passing into adulthood of all boys and girls that turned 20 the previous year. It’s normally steeped in tradition and – unlike some other countries’ coming of age rituals where kids put their hands in fire ant mounds or drink 15 beergaritas or whatever – it’s generally a pretty subdued affair until the youngsters-only after-party.
But one Setagaya Ward Coming of Age Ceremony saw things get pretty rowdy this year when a gang of bikers – called bosozoku – decided to crash the party. Bosozoku (literally, “wild running clan”) are groups of teens and 20-somethings that share a love of impractically kitted-out motorcycles, breaking traffic laws and all-around crude behavior.
On 17 June, 57 men and women between the ages of 16 and 26 received a shock when they were arrested for several traffic violations such as running red lights and weaving through traffic.
The charges come as no surprise seeing as they were participating in bōsō which is en masse reckless riding and a primary activity of bōsōzoku, Japan’s version of biker gangs. However, the shock came from everyone getting arrested and charged nearly two years after committing the act.
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