Can anybody explain the Japanese custom culture(s) please ?

I'm all about the ones done to look like they are something to do with a manga franchise. Here's a few I spotted at the Modified Nationals, apologies if you have seen these before...













Also UK, a while ago at shows

The lorries are mental

The Manga picture cars are called Itasha : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itasha

I wish Retroscenemag was still up as I did an explanation article about all of this stuff.

From Shakotan to Kaido Racer to Bosozoku then through to VIP and the evolution of the Oni Camber extreme stance scene.


For the origin of Kaido racers and Bosozoku well... this is a Japanese Super Silhouette car.


from : japanesenostalgiccar.com/motorsport-the-super-silhouette-nissans-that-inspired-the-bosozoku/

HoTWire - you can expect some more of the super silhouette stuff from my adventures in Yama, and indeed both those cars in that photo will feature in that...

I also am aware Mooneyes runs a show / or two which has a lot of that stuff at it, which from the photos looks proper quality, if sometimes a little over styled for my tastes.

I've heard of their lowrider scene stuff but seen none myself.

How many lifetimes you got? Because this is a topic we could talk about for months and still barely scratch the surface. Japans a densely populated country with radically diverse and endless subculture in a subculture when it comes to cars.

Going back to "Bosozoku" - not to get pedantic about it, because I really think the Japanese lads don't take themselves too seriously, which is a healthy attitude, but I think the thing to remember is Bosozoku is primarily a bike culture and what are seen as "boso" cars don't always fit neatly into that, but what does?

Bosozoku literally means "violent running tribe" and is associated with gangs of kids on heavily modded 250 - 400 cc motorycles with exaggerated fairings, big seat backs, extended forks and most importantly LOUD pipes. These were disaffected kids, often unable to keep up with an excessively demanding school system, often ethinically Korean in some case I believe, the people that didn't fit in and couldn't color between the lines, often seen as ripe recruiting grounds for Yakuza. I think westerners like to focus on the cool aspect and perhaps ignore the socially problematic aspect, but that's a bit deep for a car forum.

Like any youth subculture its peak had long passed before we became aware of it. Sure there are people still rocking around on Boso bikes, but it's proabably a bit like how Mods and Rockers are no longer the social existential threat they used to be and now it's all fuzzy nostalgia.

What we'd call Boso in cars is more often referred to as Zokusha (literally "Car Gang") in Japan and has as multitude of sub-styles and is part of a big crossover venn diagram of overlapping styles that may or may not be "Boso". You have Shakotan which is just a catch all term that just refers to pretty much any old car, usually that's been lowered, from very mild (Kyusha) to wild like Grachan (the Silhoutte race inspired cars).

Kei isn't a culture, it's much more boring than that - it's a tax class. Thats it.

Kei specifies external dimensions and engine size and has various incentives for things like purchase tax, ongoing admin fees (road tax I guess), parking (e.g. it's the only size car you can have in some prefectures where you don't need to prove you own a parking space), insurance, etc. ..but a lot of these have been rolled back in recent years.

It started out at 360cc (hence cars like the Subaru 360), went up to 550cc by the 80s (maybe earlier, not sure), then the size where it hit its bubble era peak - 660cc which it's stayed with right up to today apart from a change to increase exterior dimensions ever so slightly in 1998 due to tougher safety regs. Kei has a huge range of vehicles within it - hatchbacks, vans, trucks, sports cars, off roaders like certain versions of the Suzuki Jimny, there is also a Caterham that fits these regs and Japanese market smart cars so it's not exclusively Japanese either, just something you can fit a model into to gain certain advantages if you sell in Japan.

The thing to remember too is there is stuff based on Kei cars, but not Kei, especially for export markets. People will describe things like Bedford Rascals, Suzuki Wagon Rs, Suzuki Whizz Kid, Opel/Vauxhall Agila as kei, but they're not. They do have their roots in Kei Cars and I'm not trying to be "gatekeepery" here, these export models are sometimes better, because you get a bigger engine! ..or in the case of the Suzuki Jimny, wider arches along with a 1.3 litre engine (The kei version is narrower and has to loose the external spare wheel).

We really could be here for ages like I said and barely cover it.

Three sites worth checking out to clue yourself in, only one in English, but the other two have nice pictures!

japanesenostalgiccar.com/

motor-fan.jp/weboption/

nosweb.jp/nostalgichero

Kanjo style - refers to the "Kanjo Loop", an orbital section of raised urban highway in Osaka, where absolute nutters race their Honda Civics, highly illegally. Can't exactly condone it, but it is fascinating.

Very enlightening. I could never have guessed when I woke up that I'd have a sudden desire for a tiny Cobra replica.

I downloaded this a long time a go, was going to add the Boso bike gang bit but beaten too it and much better than I could do 😎👌

Thanks HoTWire , was that ever published on paper or only online and no longer accessible?


And also music btw.

Thank You so much for taking the time for this "little" excursion into japanese subcultures. I'm aware that (after WWII probably) Japan absorbed a lot of foreign cultures and added it to their long history and found their way to combine both. Traditional values have been kept widely but sometimes a generation feels the need to break certain rules, but that's certainly a worldwide thing, just like the mentioned punk/rocker/mod scenes in the UK. And sometimes such subscenes conquer the world more or less. Lowriders are probably a latino-mexican-american thing and have spread worldwide (correct me here if I'm wrong). But japanese styles hardly ever made it to other continents - only every now and then.

And that's a shame because I really like the following and would really like to see this kind of modification more over here: