Kamikaze Biker

In this firsthand account of high-risk car and motorcycle racing in Japan, Ikuya Sato shows how affluence and consumerism have spawned various experimental and deviant life-styles among youth. Kamikaze Biker offers an intriguing look at a form of delinquency in a country traditionally thought to be devoid of social problems. "Ikuya Sato's Kamikaze Biker is an exceptionally fine ethnographic analysis of a recurrent form of Japanese collective youth deviance. . . . Sato has contributed a work of value to a wide range of scholarly audiences."—Jack Katz, Contemporary Sociology "A must for anyone interested in Japan, juvenile delinquency and/or youth behavior in general, or the impact of affluence on society."—Choice "The volume provides a sophisticated . . . discussion of changes happening in Japanese society in the early 1980s. As such, it serves as a window on the 1990s and beyond."—Ross Mouer, Asian Studies Review "Kamikaze Biker is a superlative study, one that might help liberate American social science from the simplistic notion that behavior not directly contributing to economic productivity should be summarily dismissed as 'dangerous' and 'deviant.' "—Los Angeles Times Book Review

Easy Rider. Motocross Grand Prix. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. The motorcycle is a global icon of untamed freedom, symbolizing a daring and reckless lifestyle of adventure. Yet there are few books that chronicle how and when this legendary vehicle roared down the open road. Motorcycle explores the roots of the rebel’s ultimate ride. After early incarnations as a nineteenth-century steam-powered bicycle and multi-wheeled vehicles, the modern motorcycle came into its own as a cheap, mobile military asset during World War I. From there, it rapidly spread through modern culture as a symbol of rebellion and subversive power, and Motorcycle tracks the symbolic role that the bike has played in literature, art, and film. The authors also investigate the international subcultures that revolve around the motorcycle and scooter. They chart the emergence of American biker culture in the 1950s, when decommissioned fighter pilots sought new ways to satiate their desire for thrill and danger, and explore how the motorcycle came to represent the untamed nonconformity of the American West. In contrast, smaller scooters such as the Vespa and moped became the utilitarian vehicle of choice in space-starved metropolises across Europe and Asia. Ultimately, the authors argue, the motorbike is the exemplary Modernist object, dependent on the perfect balance of man and machine. An unprecedented and wholly engrossing account, Motorcycle is an essential reading for the Harley-Davidson roadhog, bike collector, or anyone who’s felt the power of the unmistakable king of the road.

What happens to gender at 120mph? Are Harley-Davidsons more masculine than Yamahas? The Gendered Motorcycle answers such questions through a critical examination of motorcycles in film, advertising and television. Whilst bikers and biker cultures have been explored previously, the motorcycle itself has remained largely under-theorised, especially in relation to gender. Esperanza Miyake reveals how representations of motorcycles can produce different gendered bodies, identities, spaces and practices. This interdisciplinary book offers new and critical ways to think about gender and motorcycles, and will interest scholars and students of gender, technology and visual cultures, as well as motorcycle industry practitioners and motorcycle enthusiasts.

Discover Katsuhiro Otomo’s visionary work and post-Akira Japanese comic culture. The catalyst of an era, of a world that was unaware of its downfall, Katsuhiro Otomo’s visionary work marked a turning point in the industry. First, in his homeland, Japan, in terms of graphics and plot on an entire generation of post-Akira artists who adopted his attention to detail, his realism and his dizzying views. But above all with his international reach, which threw Japanese comic strips and animations into the limelight in numerous countries, by trampling the rest of the world’s notion that cartoons are exclusively for children. This book dives headfirst into the radioactive culture that is the creative power of Katsuhiro Otomo, from the mangaka’s— already explosive—beginnings, up to winning recognition for Akira. Discover the themes and influences of this fundamentally anti-establishment work by exploring its socio-economic or simply literary aspects. The author of the work analyzes the phenomenon, from its tiny seed to the mighty tree, and reveals why Akira is, above all, a purely Japanese series. This book will provide you with an analysis of the socio-historical context of Akira. It aims to help Western readers to better understand the escence of this graphic and narrative treasure. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rémi Lopez graduated with a degree in Japanese from Bordeaux III University. In 2004, he cut his teeth as an author when he wrote website columns on video game soundtracks. Two years later, he joined the Gameplay RPG magazine in which he carried out the same task. He then followed the then editor-in-chief, Christophe Brondy, and his entire team to a new project: the monthly Role Playing Game magazine. Rémi wrote The Legend of Final Fantasy VIII and the book on the Original Soundtrack for Pix'n Love publications in 2013.

The Cultures of Alternative Mobilities presents a series of ethnographic studies, focusing on the local cultures of mobilities and immobilities, emphasizing the everyday sense of contingency and heterogeneity that accompanies them. Compensating for the excess of theory and criticism based on the notion of 'hypermobilities', this book sheds light on the nuanced differences and idiosyncrasies of mobility, with a view to rediscovering meanings and lifestyles marked by movement and immobility. Original, empirical and global case studies are presented by an international team of scholars, exploring the complex, negotiated and contingent nature of the social worlds of movement. By avoiding sweeping generalizations on the deeply connected and readily mobile nature of society as a whole, this volume sheds light on the diversity of mobility modes in an accessible and interdisciplinary form that will be of key interest, to sociologists, geographers and scholars of human mobility, communication and culture.

Challenging conventional understandings of time and memory, Christopher T. Nelson examines how contemporary Okinawans have contested, appropriated, and transformed the burdens and possibilities of the past. Nelson explores the work of a circle of Okinawan storytellers, ethnographers, musicians, and dancers deeply engaged with the legacies of a brutal Japanese colonial era, the almost unimaginable devastation of the Pacific War, and a long American military occupation that still casts its shadow over the islands. The ethnographic research that Nelson conducted in Okinawa in the late 1990s—and his broader effort to understand Okinawans’ critical and creative struggles—was inspired by his first visit to the islands in 1985 as a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps. Nelson analyzes the practices of specific performers, showing how memories are recalled, bodies remade, and actions rethought as Okinawans work through fragments of the past in order to reconstruct the fabric of everyday life. Artists such as the popular Okinawan actor and storyteller Fujiki Hayato weave together genres including Japanese stand-up comedy, Okinawan celebratory rituals, and ethnographic studies of war memory, encouraging their audiences to imagine other ways to live in the modern world. Nelson looks at the efforts of performers and activists to wrest the Okinawan past from romantic representations of idyllic rural life in the Japanese media and reactionary appropriations of traditional values by conservative politicians. In his consideration of eisā, the traditional dance for the dead, Nelson finds a practice that reaches beyond the expected boundaries of mourning and commemoration, as the living and the dead come together to create a moment in which a new world might be built from the ruins of the old.

In this volume the reader will find interesting forms of analysis on Japan just as it was embarking on potentially the most important changes in its political system since 1955, when the Liberal Democratic Party was created through a merger of Japan's two dominant conservative parties of that era. With the old Cold War verities no longer in place, new challenges arose for the Japanese government and Japanese corporations. The challenges of the 1990s include a protracted domestic economic downturn, and the need to begin redefining Japan's international profile in the face of an increasingly powerful China, an ever more desperate North Korea, and shifts in the shared responsibility built into the US-Japan security treaty.