Bosozoku: The Dangerous Side of Japan’s Motorcycle Gangs

The Bōsōzoku street gangs came around the 1950s. And they had a lot in commen with the American outlaw motorcycle gangs that were all about the veterans returning from WWII and looking for their lost brotherhood. At the start all members were retired aviators who formed a motorcycle crew. Now as time passed the original founders retired and more of the youth joined. With all these new riders joining the numbers grew and grew with a peak of over 42k members.

Now Bosozoku wasn’t one gang, but a whole bunch of different motorcycle gangs, Now in most of these gangs violence and chaos was frowned apon and it was considered immoral to cause harm to members of the public. But this wasn’t the case with all of them. When one group was threatened by another, it was a matter of life and death to defend your own. Violent turf war, kidnappings, and even death were not uncommon.

Now the bosozoku became infamous for being mischief loving wrong doers. indulging in riot-like violence while evading police with speedy Japanese bikes. They would ride in large groups and some of the riders would wield wooden swords, baseball bats, steel pipes which was used to cause chaos.

They rode recklessly and purposefully clogged up streets. And they even blocked traffic and incited riots in tranquil neighbourhoods.

But as they them selves liked to mention, they wherent all bad. As a former Bosozoku gang leader reported. ”One time we helped a woman get her car out of a muddy ditch on the side of the road” “Since there were so many of us, we lifted that thing… back on to the road. We did a lot of good things, too. It wasn’t all bad stuff. A lot of it was just our young spirit.”

#bosozoku #japan #JDM #gang

[FelisDestructicus]

Akira immortalized the Bosozoku for me. The one thing I love most about them is their sense of style. All bikers have their own look, but the Bosozoku were are total standouts with their fashion. Loud, but functional. Pretty cool, I say.

[kcjones]

I think motorcycles in general are, functionally great machines, but these cars are pretty awesome looking, 😎👍"

[philsn]

thus are Teens to 19 Years, because they cant judged as an adult.

[manuwilson]

...their motorcycles sound like lawn mowers!...not exactly scary.