Bosozoku lifestyle: being a gaijin
We all know the word gaijin means outsider in Japan. Most of the time we think it is only meant for foreigners, but according to Japanorama it also applies to anyone outside the normal Japanese society. This also includes the bosozoku:
Skip to 2:30 for the Bosozoku part with Iwahashi Kenitirou!
In case you are interested, here are parts 2 and 3:
Part 2: drifting with Keiichi Tsuchya
Part 3: dekotora trucks
Bosozoku lifestyle: go watch a documentary
We already had several different things to do for a bosozoku during the weekends. This is another one: watch a documentary about the bosozoku!
This documentary shows the bosozoku on its downfall:
But does that mean bosozoku is dead? In my opinion far from that: the survivors are more persistent than the people who left the tribes!
Bosozoku lifestyle: Zokusha king video game
Last week we already had you covered for the boring Sunday afternoons, but what would a bosozoku member do at night during weekdays?
Play the videogame Chou Saisoku! Zokusha King BU no BU (???!?????BU?BU ???????2??) of course!
Bosozoku videogame: zokusha king
The title is roughly translated into Fastest leader! Tribecar King and the BU part means Bored Up which indicates it is about a renewed version. (second version actually)
I could not find a video of this particular game, but I think you get the idea by this (almost) identical successor:
The third car resembles a zenki Skyline R30 and looks already quite wild! The fourth car looks like a very tough C210 Skyline Japan with mad camber. Fifth car looks like a kouki Skyline R30 RS Turbo with a big lip. Sixth car looks like a Laurel C33 with a set of exhausts which would look very good in the exhaust of the week! Seventh car looks like a Gloria 430 with some carton tuning, and after that it starts to get more and more bizarre. You can even drive a bosozoku styled Ferrari 512BB and the Batmobile!
I think I need to get myself a second hand PS2 now! 😀
Bosozoku lifestyle: Takenokozoku dancers
What would a bosozoku do on his sunday afternoon? Drive around on his bike or in his zokusha? Don’t think so: he would rather dance in Yoyogi Park next to Harajuku station:
According to the poster of the video the guy in slowmotion @1:35 has a pompadour of 50 cm in size! Amazing!
Officially this is called Takenokozoku, which roughly translates into bamboo shoot kids. This cult started out in the mid 70s and took on till the mid 80s. What happened is that gangs of school dropouts just start dancing in public places (parks, sidewalks, streets) on music played with portable music playes (what we would call ghettoblasters). Back then it was a big rebellion against the old generations and considered as immoral to do!
Most of these guys and girls were bosozoku and they still do meet up regularly in this park on Sundays to do their act. So if you ever visit Tokyo you definitely need to go to Harajuku and go have a look in Yoyogi Park!
by banpei with no comments yetBosozoku lifestyle: Kishidan
Kishidan (founded in 2000) is a Japanese pop group and they mainly play retro rock. Their music is more pop than rock, while their image is more rock than pop. Their music isn’t that interesting but their outfits are!
They mainly dress up old fashioned Japanese school uniforms (gakuran) with bosozoku haircuts. I guess their target audience should be the wannabe bosozoku school boys. A good example is this video:
Their songs are mainly about motorcycles, conflicts at school, hanging out with your gang and adolescent love.
And in this video you can see the school boys hang out with the gangs and ending up as a bosozoku themselves while having some adolecent love with a teen girl:
But if you look at this video you probably slowly get the idea what they really are: a joke group set up by big record companies to earn loads of money for them: