The Underworld Podcast - Japanese Schoolgirl Gangs and Kamikaze Bikers: How an Assassin’s Sword Kicked off a Criminal CountercultureDraft Episode for Dec 13, 2022

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

When a fascist killer plunged his sword into Japan’s socialist leader on live TV, few could have predicted its consequences. But gangs of sailor-suited ‘girl bosses’ and pompadour-wearing, ex-kamikaze fighting bikers probably weren’t top of the list. Then again who’d expect Japanese youth, rallying against Yakuza mobsters and corrupt politicians, to birth individuals less mad than Bosos who scream ‘Doki-Doki’ at their foes, and a boss called K-Ko and her weaponized bra? (It’ll make sense in the show we promise) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. October 12, 1960, politicians and around 2,500 spectators are gathered for a televised debate at the Hibiya Public Hall in downtown Tokyo. In a Jira Asanuma, leader of Japan's socialist party, a towering man, iconic, never to be seen without his thick-rimmed specs and scratchy moustache is the main draw. Asanuma is a behemoth in post-Morjapan, a place battered and bruised and confused about its identity, traditions and place in the world. But he's a polarising figure too. The previous year, he visited Chairman Mao in China to declare the United States a common enemy. Throughout 1960, Asanuma's party has been instrumental in huge anti-Washington protests,

during which demonstrate a storm Tokyo's national diet building, Japan's parliament, and one woman is killed. The fallout of that deadly episode has toppled the right-wing government of Nobosuke Kishi, a right-wing suspected war criminal who's enjoyed the backing of the CIA and the support of Yakuza organized crime groups. At a debate in Hibiya, Asanuma is set to stress how his socialists will support free and fair elections, rather than communist revolution. At around 3pm, Asanuma advances to the podium and begins his speech,

but right-wing activists drown it out with heckles and jeers. Five minutes later, the crowd settles down and Asanuma's ready to begin. But as he does, a slight 17-year-old named Toya Yamaguchi, dressed in his school uniform, storms the stage and charges Asanuma. He's wielding his father's short-bladed Yoroidoshi sword, the kind feudal samurai once used to pierce their enemy's armour. Asanuma's suit is no match, and he reels in agony as Yamaguchi plunges the blade into his side. Guards grab Yamaguchi, an ultra-nationalist radical who dreams of returning Japan to its pre-war society.

But he wriggles free and he stabs Asanuma again, felling the giant leader, who folds and collapses onto the floor, bleeding out in minutes, long before anybody can get. him to hospital. Yamaguchi then attempts to turn the blade on himself, but he's wrestled to the ground, pinned and hauled off to prison. Cameras capture the entire thing. Fascist thugs have committed a vile horror, announces Soviet news agency Tass, while China calls Yamaguchi a quote, hired gangster.

20,000 Japanese flood the streets of Tokyo that very night to mourn the death of their socialist hero. leaders from across the political spectrum will speak out in praise of Asanima but Japan's socialist party is rudderless and it will be smoked at coming elections just three weeks later while awaiting trial Yamaguchi mixes toothpaste and water

and squalls a message on his prison cell wall seven lies to my country it reads 10,000 years for his imperial majesty the emperor then he tears his bed sheets into strips knots them into rope and he hangs himself from a light fixture on the ceiling. The protests, assassination and suicide rocked Japan and they split its political factions even further.

A US deal around which the protests was started to leave military bases on Japanese soil will be signed. But that leaves Tokyo in a state of flux called between a traditionalist past and the breakneck lurch of Western capital. Amid the chaos, the Yakuza thrive, empowering and piggybacking on the kinds of nationalist leaders, Asanuma had sought to vanquish at the polls. By the mid-1960s, their numbers swelled to an all-time high, 200,000 gangsters countrywide. But Asanuma's televised slaughter, and the political and mafia power grabs it invites,

will spark incredible countercultures, anti-yakuza and feminist movements that will manifest in gangs, and gaggles of street thugs of both genders whose lurid exploits in spy world fashion and some of the world's most recognizable movie characters. Among them are washed-up kamikaze pilots and a self-appointed so-called girl boss they call Keiko the Razor. Welcome to the Underworld podcast. Hey guys and welcome to the podcast that single-hously battling stereotypes about Japanese schoolgirls or at least doing its bit to change the SEO.

My name's Sean Williams. I'm a journalist in London. I'm joined by Danny Gold, who is a journalist in New York City. I'm just about over my World Cup heartbreak, although I'm definitely doing better off than the 21-year-olds who smashed up the pub. I watched it in. That's about as British as it gets. And we've got something else as rare as an England World Cup win, and that is a Danny Gold correction. So take it away. Well, I mean, I don't know if it's like that rare, but I feel obligated to come out and say that I fucked up last episode. I said, I think we talked about Pistol Pete, right, and sex money murder. And I mentioned that he had a podcast, which is something I should have looked into more because, you know, he was locked up and in isolation for a long time. And I thought things had loosened.

And Pistopit is like a pretty popular nickname, but it turns out, and also the podcast is about, like, interviewing guys from prison or in prison or about like, you know, drug gang stuff. It's actually a different dude who has that podcast, you know, was called, like King of Rikers or something like that, which should have tipped me off. But yeah, I got that really wrong. So Pistol Pete from the episode does not have a podcast. Of all the things like to get wrong, I mean, assuming that a middle-aged man has got a podcast is not, it's not the worst call that you could ever make.

I think a middle-aged man doing life in prison. But, you know, I just thought maybe it was like one of those arts programs or something that people do. But yeah, so Mia Kulpa on that one. All right, cool. Yeah, this one is a little bit different. I hope you guys like it. A bunch of random, like, different things thrown in, but it's all super interesting.

I kind of like got onto it when we did the first Japanese one. I mean, it feels like forever ago. I think it's one of our first shows. I think back in 2020, around the fall then, like we kicked this thing off and I did a two-parter on the history of the Yakuza, how they came out of the feudal period, got wildly rich in Imperial Japan. And then they used the U.S.'s Cold War anti-communism to get even richer after the war, only to see it all crumble down.

and end up scrubbing actual shit off the decks of the Diamond Princess. Remember that cruise ship moored up in Yokohama because of COVID? You know, that was the time when we were all getting hammered on Zoom quiz nights and wondering when we'd ever live normally again. I'm not sure we ever did, really. And I have a friend of the pod, Jake Hedlsteen's author of The Incredible Tokyo Vice about his time on the crime beat in Japan's capital. It's still available online for a couple of quick guys.

Patreon.com forward slash the underworld podcast. Do it. Yeah, that's where we put up all the books. bonus episodes and everything else that you can get for a very cheap price, patreon.com slash the underworld podcast. Also, the Tokyo Vice Show is pretty awesome. I was a big fan. I think HBO Max, right? It was really good, really well done. Oh, cool, man. I've still not seen it. But, you know, anyway, this is two years later. We're obviously millionaires now. Jake's show is huge. And the Yakuza stock is worth a bit less than a board eight. According to Japan's National Police Agency, membership of organized crime groups there dropped by almost 10% in

2021, down to just 24,100, which is way, way down from that 60s peak of 200 grand. One of Tokyo's biggest families, the Anagasaki Kai, God, sorry, announced it was disbanding only last month, which is good news, I think? I don't know. Kind of a real bummer for them, though. I mean, how does that disbanding process work? It would kind of be a fascinating thing, I think, to follow for a document. many filmmaker or journalist just to kind of really spend time with these guys that are now, although I guess they were more business-oriented as opposed to a lot of organized crime groups, but it's, yeah, I don't know, it kind of reminds me of, you know, Fark is banding in Colombia,

and you've got all these Colombian guerrillas in the jungle that are coming in from the cold. Yeah, I think that's probably a little bit more intense than what's going on here, but I imagine there might be some breakaway groups or something along those lines. Yeah, got to be. I think you might be using Podtime to pitch editors there. that would be a pretty good film. Yeah, $3 a word, I'll fucking pitch. Anyway, moving on.

But Japanese crime right, it's not just about Yakuza and their own deep set rules and tats and all that kind of stuff. I mean, in fact, there were a bunch of really interesting and crazy gangs that grew up in the subculture of the 1960s and beyond. And the televised killing of Inajira Asanuma that we just went through, that was the catalyst for a ton of it. And you might think you've never seen. these gangs before, but you almost

certainly have. So take for example Tarantino's 2003 movie Kill Bill Volume 1. You know that Japanese schoolgirl character the kind of Harajuku Girl assassin with a razor ball and chain played by Chiaki Kuriyama who was also in Battle Real.

Well actually she's an example of somebody called a Sukiban and I'm sorry Japanese speakers. As always we're going to butcher and kill your language in this episode. And that word comes from Suke or Girl and ban, which is a short form of the word bancho or gang boss. So, Sukuban aren't just skirts and scouts, but they definitely are that too.

They're proper gangs, like fully fledged, paid up gangsters, albeit a little less industrious than their Yakuza counterparts. And despite coming out of a movement stretching all the way back to the Second World War, Asanuma's assassination plays a massive role in their stepping out into the limelight in a 60s full of social upheaval. So side story here. This is from a couple of years ago, and I worked at Vice News, and it was just starting off, right? Probably the most popular video we did there, or at least like top three, despite it not being, you know, that much of a crazy news story.

You're super interesting. No disrespect to my guys, Andrew Glazer and Simon Estrovsky, was about the Japanese schoolgirls, like the walking dates industry thing. They're kind of hustle there. That's like not prostitution, but sort of in the gray area there. because so many perves were probably YouTubeing or Googling Japanese schoolgirls for sale or Japanese schoolgirls and I just checked

and it has 14 million views on YouTube. 14 million. So my doc on the Rohingya, which is like probably the best thing I've done, exposes human trafficking networks and Thailand on earth insane UN fuckery.

I think that has like 200,000. And what I'm saying in a long-winded way is that we need to be sure to put the phrase Japanese schoolgirls in the title for this episode just to get that massive purve bounce. The Venn diagram of people who listen to our show, watch Vice and type that into Google. I'm not going to say what that looks like, but I don't know, man. Yeah, it's a, it's a circle. It's basically a circle.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, you've got 225,000 views on that. Fuck, I mean, half the stuff I write for magazines. Who reads magazines anymore? Can you even get a copy of Outside magazine? you were saying the other day? Nah. All right.

Keep it, keep it going. All right. Anyway, yeah, journalism's doing well. Despite, anyway, going back to that time in Japan, despite Japan's lost an occupation by the Americans right after the war, for many years, its society remains one of rigid roles and strictures, and there's little room for women's movements like they were in other Western nations. In fact, women didn't even get the vote in Japan until 1947,

and that was only after a U.S. back constitution. and overhaul, which caused plenty of issues amongst the country's old male-dominated politics. It's a lot has changed since then, obviously. In fact, this 1947 constitution in Japan is in most ways more progressive than America's very own. But while we're here, quiz question, which nation was the first to allow women to vote universally? Yes, New Zealand in 1893. So congrats, Kiwis. He did something interesting. I'm going to ename my future compatriots.

Anyway, after this point, women. begin getting jobs in industry and other sectors in Japan, and that challenges the state as quo. And the first march towards the Sukaband gangs actually comes out of organized crime itself, sex work, to be precise, so we're not going to venture away from the prostitution. And there's some half a million Japanese women working in the trade during the 1950s, when the Americans are in control and the islands are building themselves back from this wholesale destruction. Almost all sex workers then ply their trade out of government sanctions, red light districts, meaning it's actually legal at this point.

And that also means that Japan's political elites and Yakuza gangsters have free range on their earnings. Now, in Tokyo, you can still see that world in the district of Kibuchiko. A Kabukicho, Christ, man, I'm going to struggle with this one. The corner of Shinjuku that is like crammed with smoky bars, hostess places, brothels. I went out there once and it was amazing. Some stories for another day, definitely. You know, we actually, we have time if you want to get into your stories from there. I mean, all I'm going to say is that that guy and his wife's proposal were really,

it was really kind and maybe I should have just stopped smoking menthol cigarettes and took them up on it. But anyway, so because these high profile red light districts, right, are run by the mob at the behest of local politicians or vice versa, a hand in glove kind of thing, you get this feminist movement that actually bucks the trend of women in other nations at the time by calling for this system of sex work to be made illegal. So they're making around three times the cash of other traditionally female jobs at the time like receptionist or factory workers. And they don't want these men in suits taking a massive cut.

You know, that's really interesting because you kind of see that sometimes in black markets, right? Like how much more profitable was alcohol when there is a black market there? But also a big thing right now. The LA Times just had a huge article on it. this is the beginning of September, about how the weed industry right now in Cali is just so much more violent and dangerous and messed up since it got legalized.

And we had a listener, like maybe a year ago, who was going to take me into it. I think he was in Northern California. Yeah. But he dropped out the face of the earth. I'm actually kind of worried about him. But he was saying how violent and how dangerous it's got in because a lot of organized crime groups have moved in

because I don't remember. the specifics, but I assume it's because, you know, the money is semi-legal. They're operating in a gray area. And the feds have kind of backed off of Cali because they're like, okay, it's legal in the state. Do you guys want to deal with it, deal with it? But these kind of smaller police forces in these rural areas or northern California, you know, valley areas, whatever it is, they don't really have the manpower to get out there and do something about these, you know, really, a lot of them international organized crime groups that are moving in and making a ton of money. And of course, they're employing, a lot of undocumented workers, and they abuse them and all that sort of stuff.

And then also there's all sorts of stick up crews out in, especially around the Oakland area, because a lot of the business is done in cash because of all the banking regulations. So a lot of these guys, I mean, he was telling me, a lot of them are like, no, make weed illegal again because it's the only thing that's going to regulate this business. I mean, there's got to be hopefully another answer. Maybe federal legal will change things. Yeah, it's kind of wild to think about. Yeah, I saw some documentary a while back about people taking cash over.

state lines and they're like driving around in station wagons like some kind of national lampoon mad max crossover with like shotguns hanging out the windows with piles of cash in the back it's pretty nuts yeah they get arrested some of them in like in states where weed isn't legal and uh they can face they can face serious time seriously jesus christ i mean i'm actually gonna sort of look into that thing next week in the pool because i'm going out to look at the weed industry and whether i don't know like whether with the legalization in Europe and the US, these Nepalese historic kind of growers in the South near India are branching out into more exotic and kind of high class strains of stuff.

I've heard that this is going on, so they're sort of trying to build a USP. But yeah, that's going to be pretty cool to see. But these movement, back to Japan, these movements to sort of make prostitution illegal or at least take them out of the hands of kind of the gangsters and the elites, Well, they largely fail at the time. Men stay on top, not least the Yakuza, which are just getting more powerful in Japan by the minute.

In 1958, Tokyo cops estimate there are 80,000 Yakuza across Japan. Within five years, that more than doubles, with the biggest Yakuza outfit, which is the Yamaguchi Gumi, no relation to our assassin up the top of the show, cementing its place as the nation's number one. Women can't join the Yakuza, of course, and they've leaned nationalists and right wing to say the very least since their foundation.

And since we're here, let's kind of catch you up on that quickly. The name Yakuza actually comes from the combination hand of 8, 9 and 3. You could get in this Baccarat-style card game called Hana Fuda, which was a favourite of the 18th century Bakuto, who are kind of an untouchable gambler cast in feudal Japan. Yakuza also transliterates as good for nothing. But they're not really down and outs, right? According to Yaku, they come out of early vigilante groups called Machi Yako,

which are kind of battling neighborhood watch types who defend villages from Ronin, or samurai fighters who've lost their masters and fancy and easy pillage. So I'm getting all your favorite Japanese terms right out the way at the top of the show. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney Plus. Let's go. Get ready for a new case. We're going to crack this case and prove for our decoriest partners of all time. New friends.

Gary Dessnake. And your last name? The Snake. Dream team. New habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly working at.

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Shop the full collection on Amazon or visit Kyrad.com to learn more. Anyway, fast forward to the 20th century and Yakuza are more structured, divided out into families and assimilated into several ultra-nationalist groups by which are gaining prominence and expansive Imperial Japan. Yakuza, under the leadership of this guy who is a fascism fanboy called Yoshio Kadama, they smuggle and gun run when Japan occupies Chinese Manchuria from 1931, which is one of the events that actually led to the Second World War. Kadama himself becomes one of Asia's richest people stealing from the benighted Chinese.

We went into him a bunch in the first couple of shows about the Yakuza, but here's a bit from David Kaplan's 2003 book, Yakuza, Japan's Criminal Underworld. Quote, Kodama operated as a sort of imperial Japanese version of Catch-22's Milo Minderbender, buying tungsten here, guns there, reselling them and peddling vast stores of radium,

cobalt, nickel and copper. He obtained the materials in China and Manchuria, forcing the Chinese at gunpoint to sell at pitifully low prices. It was an incredible, lucrative effort, one that might easily be termed looting. And then, at the end of the war, of course, America drops the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrenders to occupation by the US. Kadama winds up in prison, but he's released in 1948 as part of an attempt to cold the spread of communism in Asia by propping up right-wingers and fascists. That's not obviously confined to Japan.

The CIA even pays him to beat up leftists, which is one of his favorite hobbies, but not as much as getting paid, and he runs contraband and drugs, not least meth peddled by the Axis powers during the war, to explode the power of the Yakuza for decades to come. So these guys, these gangsters, they're hardly summer of love, wild child hippies, and to Japan's embittered youth, particularly its women. Yakuza and Japan's right-wing politicians are just two sides of the same coin. Men in power, in suits, and against change. Women begin. forming small gangs and patrolling the streets of major Japanese cities through the second half of the 1950s. Wait, are they like greasers? Like what kind of are, you know, like savage nomad style

biker gangs? Or are they more kind of just in it for the look? Yeah, there is this element of that, and we're going to get to that with another group of guys further down the show. There's a lot of imports from the U.S. counterculture at the time. Greases is a good, like, touchpoint, actually. But these women, they kind of take it in their own direction, right? They run small-time scams. They do gambling, theft and other street crimes, but that is about to change and in pretty spectacular style. Now we're back at 1960, where we began this show. Public anger in Japan grows over the proposed United States-Japan Security Treaty. This is the measure I mentioned at the top of the show, which, if passed in the diet, Japan's parliament,

will allow Washington to keep military bases on Japanese soil. locals simply know it as, quote, Ampo, which is a portmanteau of security treaty in Japanese, and you can see why it's controversial. Not only as America dropped atomic bombs on Japanese civilians, but it's occupied and dictated to Tokyo since, which is a national embarrassment that unites leftists and nationalists alike. In May 1960, Japanese leader Novosuki Kishi, who he mentioned earlier, he's the head of the Conservative Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP. He tries to push this bill through the diet

to coincide with a state visit from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, further stoking claims of authoritarianism among fellow lawmakers and protests which are gathering by this time in Tokyo. I just want to stop you right there and let our listeners know that the politics stuff that's going to end soon and then Sean's going to start talking about schoolgirls who hide razors in their skirts and cut people's faces and all sorts of fun stuff like that.

So just bear with him for a little more background. Yes, just another hour of this to go. So Kishi, this right-wing politician, he's not a wallflower. He's accused of war crimes himself during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. It's kind of like denartification in Germany. And he's also pals of Kadama, our Yakuza friend, and he's about to call in a favor. On June 10th that year, Eisenhower's press secretary James Haggerty arrives at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, only to have his car attacked by protesters, and he has to be airlifted to safety along

alongside US ambassador Douglas MacArthur by a Marines helicopter. Now this is massively humiliating for the LDP, and Kishi turns to his yakuza buddy Kadama and asks him to provide some muscle, as the now-dubbed Ampo protests threatened to turn ugly in Tokyo. Five days later, they do. On June 15, 1960, hundreds of thousands of people, most of them students crowd the diet,

I guess insert joke about teenagers eating disorders here, is that bad form? It's a bad joke and bad form, so basically, you know, two for two, far for the course for you. Wicked, yeah, got it. Anyway, a small group of hard leftists, they break into the building itself and fight with batten-wielding cops, and amid the violence, a female student named Michiko Kamba is killed. Outside the diet, Kishi's called in Yakuza Honcho Kadama and his nationalist thugs, who ran protesters with trucks and beat them with spiked planks, hospitalising dozens, but amazingly, leaving no one dead.

In the aftermath, politicians and newspapers denounce violence, quote, on both sides. Is any for this reminiscent America? I don't know. Kishy, though, he's for the block. Media blamed the chaos on him and Kodama, and on June 16, he commits political Harry Carey, steps down as Eisenhower cancels his trip too. On June 18, the last day before this Ampo Treaty can be ratified, and even bigger, this time peaceful crowd thongs the diet. No dice. It passes.

For millions of Japanese, not least the young women, the Ampo protests and the conspiracy of politics and organized crime that helped push through the treaty are the spark that lights a touch paper of counterculture social revolution. And then, on October 12th, that very same year, Otoya Yamaguchi plunges his sword into Asanuma's belly on live TV. And overnight, Japan just doesn't have a disaffected youth anymore. It's got a full-blown culture war.

To be fair, I mean, this culture war sounds much more interesting than the current American culture war about, you know, arguing over ethnicities of elves and mermaids and things like that. Although plenty of young men who study the sword, so at least there's something in common there. That's true. There is like a unifying factor in that. Yeah. Anyone, the front lines of this culture war are the Sukaban. These girl bosses, prowl Tokyo and other major cities, and they quickly become notorious. Writes Annie Wang at Calibur magazine, quote, brandishing katanas and tucking razor blades under their skirts. So there you go, Danny, you got it. Sukaband followed a strict hierarchy and moral code. With their outrageous fashion choices and criminal behavior, Sukaband directly challenged the notion of the ideal Japanese woman,

proving that Japanese women are indeed more than just objects to be exploited by the Japanese government and podcasters in 2022. Sukaband participated in petty crimes like shoplifting while also dabbling in more serious crime like break-ins and public conflicts. What are public conflicts? I think just to punch up, basically. The Sukaband, though, they stick to a rigid code of conduct, just like their male counterparts in the Yakuza.

And they're also strictly hierarchical. If a girl is disloyal, does drugs or gets off with the wrong guy, they're, quote, lynched, which is a term that's very distinct from its U.S. connotation, as it basically means getting a beat down, anything from cigarette burns to a razor-slashing. And these gangs, they have amazing names. There's the Tokyo Shoplifters Group, which has just 80 members, and it goes all the way up to something called the Canto Women's Delinquent Alliance. Now, among all the Sukaband gangs, the Kanto Women Delinquent Alliance, they stand above them all.

And I'm sure you'd agree it storms in Top Spot in our underworld gangs' names charts. These guys pop up in the mid-60s. They peak in the 1970s with an estimated 20,000 members, which is huge. These shoplifting gangs are like the female version of the lowlifes from Brooklyn, which, you know, I don't know if you know about that. I don't know about those guys. Yeah, I mean, they were actually pretty hard, but they were famous for like, for racking just like going to the stores and like just taking everything like stealing everything I think because 80s is really when they popped up but they had like a special just like interest

in Ralph Lauren clothing and they all wore like Ralph Lauren so I don't it's an interesting I mean maybe we'll do a we'll do a story on it one day but they're they're a pretty fascinating like legendary New York City street gang I feel like the the Decepticons as well the gang that Shine was in back in a day in Brooklyn and Manhattan I think they were like ripping off big stores right The duck down guys were involved. But yeah, I mean, they were hard as hell. They weren't just like shoplifters who stole stuff. But that was a big part of it was just racking,

taping everything they could and then selling it and getting money from it. Yeah, shine dis. Love it on this show. Here is something about the Cantoe Women Delinquent Alliance, though, which is an altogether different kind of gang that I found in an academic paper. And honestly, there is not a lot about these guys. I even, like, contacted a local museum galleries. I'm trying to get some information about it that I can put in

bonus as well. But here's the academic paper. Quote, their antics range from petty crime like shoplifting to full on brawls with other gangs. I guess that's the public conflicts that we mentioned before. The women always carried chains and single blade razors of their weapons of choice. One famous Sukha ban was Keiko the Razor. Kiko's nickname came from her tendency to quickly pull the razor she kept between her breasts out and slash an enemy's face in one swift motion. I mean, Kako the Razor, pulling a blade out from between her boobs, stealing shit and smashing people's faces in. I mean, come on, man, this stuff is mad. Keiko herself, she comes from the Tokyo suburb of Saitama, and she said to have commanded a private army of some 50 Sukaband.

I mean, Cheryl Sandberg, at your heart out. And because this is Japan, right, these girl bosses, of course, they've got to style all of their own. Here's a quote from the website, Groovy History, because the history of Saturnations and gangs is nothing. if it ain't gruffy. Quote, they did not embrace the leather biker look of the Hells Angels and other American gangs,

but rather turned their restrictive school girls' uniforms into a symbol of their rebellion. They wore a long-pleated skirt in defiance of the mini-skirt which had risen in popularity in the 60s during the sexual revolution. The skirt was topped by a sailor blouse

and an untied necktie under the collar. Though their skirts were long, they often cut their shirts to expose their midrifts. They wore converse sneakers as well. well and their clothes often had handmade modifications included badges and buttons they wore very little makeup and supported super thin eyebrows if we could just put images on this podcast episode it would easily be our biggest episode ever how do we do this there must be a way we've got to get the i'm sure there is i'm not going to do any effort anyway some folks call this the quote ivy look ivy league

preppiness and all that kind of stuff because these outfits have been worn by these rebel girl gangs uniforms weirdly become one of post-war japan's ultimate expressions of counterculture freedom freedom writes perspex magazine quote nothing says thorny rose like a school girl who's going to punch your face in or at least act like she will it's a pretty good quote anyway university of missouri professor laura miller was living in osaka which is japan's third biggest city right during the heyday of the Sukabang. She recently told Vice that, quote, I admired them for rebelling against mainstream gender and femininity norms. Walking around different districts, it soon became clear that they were all from working class neighborhoods. It seemed that their rebellion was linked to the fact

they knew they would never become princess office ladies and adorable marriage fodder for white collar of salary men. So this all might make the Sukaband sound more like the kind of feminist movement sweep in the world in the swinging 60s. And to some extent, then, yeah, they kind of are. But those ivy outfits, the sailor and school uniforms, well, they serve a second purpose, and that is concealing a bunch of deadly weapons. There's the chains, the razor blades, and there's bamboo swords.

That's kind of awesome. Like, I mean, I'm not, you know, I've never been someone who was super into anime or, what is it called, like a wee, but like into Japanese culture. But obviously, you know, there's a huge cultural impact and signifier of those uniforms, right? Yeah. And it's pretty cool to just learn now that it got that way

from like these badass teenage girls trying to conceal like blades and the fucking weapons. Yeah, I mean, even if you've got a past and interesting movies that reference anime and manga and stuff, like you're going to come across this archetype, right? I mean, these guys though back then, I mean, they really do mean business. And there's a bunch of obscure references online to them being terrors on the streets. Again, like, it's really hard to find good Japanese stuff, hard to find translated stuff from there. And I'm really trying to dig into it a bunch more because I want to do some more on this kind of stuff further down the line. Maybe some less stuff on second wave feminist movements

in Japan, but I don't know. Send us emails. Let us know what you think. Anyway, it's hard to underestimate how chaotic 1960s Japan actually is, right? As mentioned before, the country's struggling deeply with its traditions and identity in the wake of its defeat in the Second World War. An industry is coating its cities in smog and filth. Right? It's Robert Whiting in a Japan Times, quote, Tokyoites dwell under a constant cloud of noise, dust, and pollution, as the city struggled to rebuild itself from the wreckage of the American B-29 Super Fortress bombings. I mean, to be fair, that sounds like a lot of Europe at the time, you know, just trying to

rebuild from various countries' bombings with industry and all sorts of chaos and organized crime and militant groups, like having shootouts in the streets and bank robberies and all that. Yeah, yeah, we've got loads of pleated skirt, schoolgirl gangs, like slashing people around the faces with razors from their bra. But no, no, we don't. We're nowhere near as cool. Anyway, there's a seminal NHK documentary called Tokyo from this time, as the Japanese capital was gearing up to host a 1964 Olympic Games.

It focuses on a young woman whose father was killed in the Allied firebombings, quote, Tokyo, unplanned and full of construction sites, is no place for a human being to live. Only a robot with no sense could live in this rough, coarse, harsh and dusty city that doesn't have any blue skies. I mean, they must have done something right eventually, right? The last 50 years because it seems like the most, I don't know, convenient, well-run city in the world by now, no? I mean, it was when I was there a yonks ago.

But, yeah, I don't remember it even being polluted. I don't know. It's like the biggest city in the world by a mile, though, right? Tokyo, I think it's like 35 million or something. It's pretty unbelievable. Anyway, drug addiction soars in this broken down environment, especially among young men, playing right into the hands, of course, of Kadama and his Yakuza, which becomes its own kind of cult in the country, tattoos, fingers cut off the misdemeanors, and a hierarchy that comes

straight out of feudal and fascist ideology. The Sukaband, though, they go the other way. You want to be a Sukaban? Welcome right in. You want to leave any time? Go for it. There's no lifetime membership for the Sukuban, meaning that by the end of the 1970s, their founders have all got older, they're settling down, and they get out of the Razor Blade booby-slashing game.

Even the uniforms go out of fashion, as Japan's women's movements focus elsewhere, and Japan's by now booming economic miracle. A sailor outfit isn't subversive anymore, just looks a bit trad and boring. Instead, the Sukaban archetype becomes a bell of the era's low-rent movie makers, with titles like 1970s, delinquent girl boss blossoming night dreams, or the following years even better titled, Delinquent Girl Boss Ballad of Yokohama Hoods.

And these movies often take on a similar tone to American black exploitation movies of the same era, falling on pretty hackneyed and problematic stereotypes. And later on, these movies actually take on a more pornographic twist. There's Girl Boss Guerrilla, Escape from Reform School, and the noir sex thriller Zero Woman Red Handcuffs. Right, dazed. Settle down, settle down, Sean.

Well, it's the listeners I'm worried about. Right, Dase Claire Marie Healey, quote, Sukaband's subculture was a pop cultural time bomb, representing something so utterly new in Japanese society, the stylistic signatures of the group were too much for image makers to resist. In the 70s, Japan struggled to keep up with American cultural imports, and even major film studios found that only erotic productions would be able to keep them afloat. Hatterday presents, in the red corner, the undisputed, undefeated weed whacker guys.

Champion of hurling grass and pollen everywhere. And in the blue corner, the challenger, extra strength, Hannity! Eye drops and work all day to prevent the release of histamines that cause itchy allergy eyes. And the winner, by you. knockout is Padiday. Paraday. Bring it on. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion

dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. Enter exploitation movies or pink films, sex-fueled cinema with sugar band culture on the brain. So the Sukkah Band, the girl bosses, they wind down throughout the 1980s, and they just become these kind of pornographic tropes, just, by the way, as the Yakuza is branching into major international drugs and arms trading, even getting itself onto the boards of Japan's biggest corporations. They're golden geckos and skinny tires, and they're doing this crazy thing called Sokoya, where gangsters threaten to embarrass companies at their AGM. I went into this a bit with the old Yakuza show, but it's pretty crazy and really emblematic of how deeply ingrained Yakuza clans are in regular society in Japan in 1980s.

In one episode, mobsters throw a bottle of whiskey at a company leader. I mean, these guys are almost untouchable at this point. But as the Succa band themselves are just disappearing into little more than pornography, manga and other anime tropes, another kind of Japanese gangster is on the rise. And these guys are no Yakuza either. Just like the Sukuban, they come out of the imperial strictures of wartime Japan, but they're not women trapped within a sexist society. They are Kamakazi pilots. Yes, Kamakazi.

The men indoctrinated into the holiness of the Imperial Japanese Empire, then dispatched into the quote, special attack unit of the Air Force to fly suicidal missions against Allied naval fleets. This, by the way, is your periodic reminder to watch. 1970 movie Tora, Toro, Tora, Tora, one of the best war films, well, one of the best movies ever.

Watch it, burn your copy of Poeh-Harbour, watch it again, just watch it. Anyway, not all Kamikaze pilots are killed in battle, of course, but they're still scrawled in this death cult, and they struggle to adapt to life in battered, mundane post-war Japanese life. So, they turn to US culture.

And the idea of a fully Japanese motorcycle club begins to take shape, is where you're going to get your greasers. You might know these guys from 1988 movie Akira still holds up absolute banger. Near the beginning of the movie a motorcycle gang flies through the streets of Tokyo with engines revving, tail lights leaving streets of color in their wake.

I've seen none of these movies. Oh man. Really? Wow. I reckon, I mean, you would love Akira is an absolute classic. Have you, I mean, you've watched all like Kurosara stuff in the 1960s and all those sorts of things. I mean, not really. Ah, maybe we should stick those up on the reading list.

Yeah. He's a great. I'm a Philistine, man. That is... Wait, is it a cartoon? Is it like a normal movie? Is it a cartoon? Yeah. Although just calling it a cartoon, I feel like we're going to get angry emails,

but, you know, it's all interaction with the fans. I'm learning. It's all good. Anyway. I'm learning. Now I am introducing to you the Bozozuku. Writes Heist and a biote, quote, though first known as the Kaminarizoku or Thunder Tribe,

the term Bozozuku, which roughly translates to violent speed tribe, which is also awesome, was coined in the 1970s when riots broke out and biker culture became more criminal in nature. So these are fanatics, right? They're desperate for a thrill and they're pumped up on US biker culture and movies like Rebel With a Cause, which was massive in Japan apparently. A lot of these guys are also handy mechanics having worked on kamikaze planes and other war material. So modding up a little Honda is child's play. By the early 19-18, 80s, membership of Bozazuku gang swells to its greatest number, which is around 42,000. And the gangs, they just favour run-of-the-mill 250 to 400-ccccc bikes, but they pimped them up with stuff

like mod-e-sauce, oversized faring and these massive comical sissy bars. Flashy paint jobs and decals often depict the rising sun. These also, of course, coming out of ultra-nationalist military battalions. Who doesn't in lovely Japan? And like the Sukuban, these guys have. an iconic outfit which is the Tokofuku translation special attack clothing these are jumpsuits inspired by munitions laborers and kamikaze pilots and they're embroidered with gang slogans and imperial flags plus kamikaze headbands with stuff like police be damned or bring it on written on them i feel

like some very uh safer work translation was stuck on that anyway they also get into rockabilly fashion and eighties bozazzuku gangsters often have huge pompadour hair haircuts and leather jackets to go with the rest of their stuff. It's pretty cool looking, to be honest. In these times, the Bozizuka are mostly known for just causing havoc, racing, fighting other gangs and carrying out petty crime. Do they actually, I mean, do they do real shit, though? Like, are they kind of just brawlers in the street, or are they clashing with the

Yakuza? Are they involved in serious, organized crime? Yeah, that comes later on. I'm going to get to that a bit further down. I mean, they do, they do like get into pretty violent. violent attacks on rival gangs, like a bit of a warrior-style thing. They do cause a lot of havoc, closing down roads and fighting with the police. But, yeah, I mean, they're a strictly men's club, right?

So, unfortunately, there are no bamboo swords and no booby-delivered razor attacks, which obviously is sad. Here's a pretty cool extract from the book Kamakazi Biker by Akuya Sato, quote, What is Bozo driving? It includes both driving at breakneck speeds, and showing off before passes by a curiosity seekeres on the busiest streets of Japanese cities. A bozo drive-through one night consists of several sessions of high-risk races, broken by intermissions.

The length of each session varies from one to two hours. According to one bozo interviewer in the book, quote, So many cars, so many people, my heart sounds like ban, ban, bean, docky-doky, like being stricken with polio. What the fuck? I cannot say even words. No shit.

I just cry, Yo! I hope that was as easy to hear as it was to read out loud, and I was being pretty phonetic there. Anyway, yeah, there's a subculture of this subculture itself called the Yankee, which is not necessarily to do with America either, which I'll get into in a shorter bonus for the Patrons this week if you're interested, but the Bozazuku and their antisocial tomfoolery, they don't exist alone for long. Being handy with their fists and with a bike, they become this kind of lower-rung introduction. level for the Yakuza themselves, beating up people on ferry and drugs, similar to how bikies are used by cartels in North America, Australia and New Zealand. This only accelerates in the 1990s, as Japan goes through a period of economic downturn, I think they call it the lost decade,

millions lose their jobs, young working class people fall into the hands of organised criminals. Add to that, a lack of disposable income for the bozos to mott up their bikes, and the movement kind of dies a little, gets eaten up by four more pay. powerful forces. In 2004, the government also leads a crackdown on biker-led crime, giving cops the ability to arrest respective members on the spot, and it decimates their numbers. These days, Bozo's number just 5,000 across Japan, and by the way, Bozo's nothing to do with bozos as we know it. You can still hear the random biker revving through the city or across the countryside at night, but that's about it. Every once in a while, some group will try their luck

creating a bigger disturbance, but these instances are few and far between, and they're usually swiftly handled by now far more powerful police presence. I've been trying to think of like a fast and furious Tokyo drift joke for something like 10 minutes and I had nothing so far. But it's, I mean, like, how many fast and furious movies are there now? Like 18? I mean, it's not even a joke, right? I think nine or 10, but that's one of the best ones.

That's a great movie. Okay, cool. I'll stand behind that. I'll try and convince my girlfriend. watch that tonight. Well, you've never, you've never seen that? You've seen these other, like, cartoon, but you've never seen?

I've seen the first one. I didn't even, like, bro, I thought I was, oh, come on. Yeah, Vincent Diesel. I don't know. He's not been on the list for a while. I've never heard someone say the phrase Vincent Diesel before my entire life. I just think his name's far better if you call him Vincent. But, um, anyway, as we come to this, the end of this episode, I mean, I know, guys,

there wasn't a lot of murder and, like, horrible extortion and the kind of shit that you guys are usually here for, but I'm hoping you enjoying this, right? That police cracked down on the bozos and the demise of the Bozazu. That's actually led to something kind of brilliant, which is the christening of Sukaban Bozazuku gangs or

girl bosses on bikes. At first these groups are just the girlfriends of bikers, but as social marries for Japan's women continues to be pretty conservative in the cultural mainstream, all female biker gangs become a modern way to break the shackles. Wright's days Claire Marie,

Healy again, quote, Today you can spot them by their embellished and embroidered jumpsuits, floral tattoos, long manicured nails and bright pink heavily stickered bikes, usually considered a separate subculture of the delinquents. The female Boazuku, are nonetheless related to Sukabang culture and their creator of girl gangs that refuse to bail down to the boys, and their emphasis on customization as a tool with which to rage against the norm.

I mean, there's a reason we're, quote, in days, and other like fashion magazines here. This is like a style, subculture sort of thing associate with gangs these days, but not not really. So anyway, next time you're watching an anime or a Japanese movie or anything

Japanese or just, you know, interacting with Japan, Danny at all in any way, I don't know why you hate them so much. Keep a close eye out for the Sukaband and the Bozazu. And they might not steal as many headlines as the Yakuza. And there's a good reason for that, obviously. But they are a massive part of post-war

Japanese crime culture. And I mean, who wants a boring black suit when you can rock out with a pompadour and a multicolored jumpsuit? And in a weird way, these gangs have got a lot to thank Asanuma's assassin, Atoya Yamaguchi for. Just not maybe in the way he'd imagined in 1960. And I'll leave you with this pretty crazy fact. Matt Braynard, who worked on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and last year organized a rally for

January 6 defendants, he was so enamored with Yamaguer. Gucci that he started a magazine and named it after him. And it's called a Toyer Literary Journal of the New Nationalism. And that is a pretty cool and strange way to win the show, eh? Yeah, that was really interesting, man. Thanks for doing that. And for everyone else, thanks for listening and coming back after our break. And yeah, patreon.com slash the new world podcast.

We are going to have a bonus episode where Sean is going to go into detail about his favorite 70s Japanese schoolgirl exploitation films. So if you want to hear that, guys got weird taste, what can I say? But yeah, until next episode. When the job gets tough, you need equipment that's built to handle it. The Cabota Construction lineup featuring the versatility to do more, durability to keep going, and increased comfort for long days on the job. With skid steers, track loaders, wheel loaders, utility vehicles,

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