著者

難波 功士

出版者

関西学院大学

雑誌

関西学院大学社会学部紀要 (ISSN:04529456)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.98, pp.43-67, 2005-03-15

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Since 1959, in the year 'Kaminari-zoku (Thunder Tribe)' was born, some Japanese motorcycle gangs began to be criticized and controlled by the police, educational institutions, and the press, which called them by names such as 'Mach-zoku', 'Harajuku-zoku' and 'Circuit-zoku'. Among them, the 'Boso-zoku (Joy-ride Tribe)', who appeared in the middle of the 1970s as the result of motorization and economic growth, provoked the most significant 'moral panic', and it was depicted as the most sensational 'folk devil' in Japanese society. Almost all of the members were males in their upper teens. They were high school students or manual workers. Their social class background was not so low, compared with other delinquent boys, though one of their features was their hostility toward the ethos of the middle class. They rejected higher learning or were rejected by it. Other features of the 'Boso-zoku' were masculinity, a sense of territory, kitsch-like nationalism, or aspiration to be featured by media, such as newspapers, car magazines and photo-books. By many means of regulation, in the 1980s, the number of 'Boso-zoku' groups and their size decreased. However, 'Yankees', 'Boso-zoku' sympathizers or alumni, have maintained or developed a unique life style. Even now, the word 'zoku' has become a synonym for 'Boso-zoku', and 'Yankee culture' survives. While 'Yankee culture' has been constructed as Japanese working class youth culture, since the 1970s, against the background of rapid growth of the college-attendance ratio from the 1960s to the 1970s, college students from middle class families constructed their own youth subculture in the beginning of the 1980s, influenced by some 'catalogue magazines' featuring trendy fashions or shops. They were named the 'Crystal-zoku' after a novel, 'Nanto-naku, Crystal (Being Like a Crystal without Reason)' written by Yasuo Tanaka. In this novel, Tanaka depicted the urban lifestyle of a female student who belonged to tennis circle, had a part-time job as a fashion model, lived with a boyfriend in a fashionable area, dressed in expensive clothes and accessories with stylish brand names, and sometimes went to a disco to meet another boyfriend. Being the opposite to 'Boso-zoku', 'Crystal-zoku' was female-centered. They loved to go shopping and to spend much time in leisure around Minato-ku or Shibuya-ku, while 'Boso-zoku' or 'Yankees' committed themselves to the locality where they lived. In the 1980s, every young person became interested in consumption, especially in fashion. So, many cliques focusing on different tastes for fashion emerged. There was the most significant division between college-goers (white-collar worker candidates) and non-college-goers (salesclerk or blue-collar candidates). In this paper, I examine 'Crystal-zoku' as an extreme example of the former and 'Yankees' of the latter. However, despite the difference of their backgrounds, these two youth subcultures symbolized the beginning of the period in which everybody's identity was based on how much money was spent on consumption, or how to consume.