11 bosozoku

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There is, however, an age-determined period within which deviant behaviors are allowed (although the deviance is also often uniformly enacted as Sato [1991] noted). Youthful folly is excused until the person attains an age when s/he is expected to move along (20 for non college students, graduation for college students).

Sato, who did his work among communities in the new city additions of western Kyoto, found that this expectation of a natural end to expressions of alternative life-styles was expressed as the “measles effect” of youth gang bosozoku (“crazy gang”) activity:

“It is widely acknowledged that bosozoku is essentially a youthful phenomenon and that few Japanese youths are bosozoku after twenty. This public recognition of the “graduation” from gang activity with the attainment of adulthood has led to a folk theory known as bosozoku hashika setsu (measles theory of bosozoku). This theory views bosozoku activity essentially as youthful indiscretion or as a manifestation of the “storm and stress” characteristic of adolescence. It is assumed that youths’ participation in gang activity is a sort of youthful fever which can be “cured” by self-healing, as in the case of measles, if one matures enough.”(Sato 1991, 158).

Every year, thousands of youth gang members across Japan reach the age where they are expected to trim their hair, change their clothes, find full-time employment and conform their public behavior in accordance with that of older people. Within months their connections with the gang have atrophied, and in a few years, they would not easily talk about this period of their lives.