Speed Tribes: Days and Nights with Japan's Next Generation

By Karl Taro Greenfeld

Categories: Politics & Social Sciences, Travel

Speed Tribes: Days and Nights with Japan's Next Generation (1994) is Karl Taro Greenfeld's nonfiction portrait of Tokyo youth after the asset-bubble years. Twelve chapters profile bosozoku motorcycle gangs, low-level yakuza, hostesses, otaku hackers, indie musicians and other subcultures. Greenfeld, raised between Japan and the United States, shows a hedonistic underground that undercuts tidy Western images of orderly, conformity-first Japan.

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• Anthony Bourdain: “he did speed tribes yep which is fantastic book actually when I read this story I went back and basically reread all of anything he ever wrote”