Back to School!

by Jamie Morris

As my student loans prove I've done my fair share of time in academic settings, but never in front of the lectern. I recently gave a presentation on the bosozoku and uyoku at Temple University's Tokyo campus.
The class called, "Youth and Deviant Subcultures in Japan" is made up of 25 students, mostly non-Japanese. I told the story of how I began and It really hit me that, even though I am low on funds and behind schedule, I have come a long way from chasing bikers with a little Sony in the streets of Nagoya.

Two thoughts though:
Firstly, trying to define or even introduce the bosozoku as a phenomenon is impossible without visuals because people need to see the striking imagery of the bosozoku (preferably on video) to begin with. Fortunately for the students, and myself, I have many options and used them all, including video interviews of Ikuya Sato author of Kamikaze Biker: Parody and Anomy in Affluent Japan. They have excerpts from his book, but let's face it, the bosozoku are made for the screen!

In that light, the way people learn is changing rapidly. This might seem like a truism but everybody, and especially youth is becoming used to a incredible variety- some might say saturated- selection of media content. Because of the net interested parties often scan rather than read full articles. The way most people find content is by way of text, but more often than not, if images are present they click on those immediately; and if video is included, then you can forget the other two. It's often possible to get more information i.e closer to the target you are searching for by using YouTube rather than Google. In practical terms, you can sift through the mountain ranges of information and topics more effectively . Something about a needle in a haystack....
True to the modern form, the above mentioned class was given my articles but it was the short video segments which sparked discussion. We utilized a PC, DVD projector and PowerPoint.

Honestly I would say it was a daunting task to set about condensing five years of research and experience into an hour and a half, but it was good to gauge the reaction and interest from the perspective of fresh blood. Most people seek me out after knowing at least something of the bosozoku but these students were truly a captive audience, and much like moviegoers who are too stubborn to walk out of a bad film, they might stay but will certainly become all the more resentful for every minute they lost in the pits of triviality and the trifles we create. In the end, I think they were engaged, as we stuck to lots of question based topics. And when the questions ceased, there was always the video!