Bosozoku : wild style of the street

Japan street and urban culture is one of the most unique in Asia especially in this modern times. Here are one examples of such culture which is popular and to some extent, only in Japan, called "Bōsōzoku".

Wikipedia said -> Bōsōzoku (暴走族, "violent running tribe") is a Japanese subculture associated with motorcycle clubs and gangs.

In other word, Bosozoku style cars should best be described as the cars driven by the Japanese gangs. This is partly true, but a lot of people actually like the Bosozoku styling as well eventhough they are not a member of a gang...

The 'zoku (族)' part indicates it is about a gang. A lot of people use 'Bōsō (暴走)' as a word to indicate this style to not refer as the gang cars. A lot of people use the zokusha(族車) designation which is widely used in Japan. Sha means car so literally it can be translates into gang-car. So in other words zokusha is the best describing word for the bosozoku style cars.

The Bosozoku style is often referred to with a lot of different names:

Shakotan : Literally means "low car" and is used mainly for indicating extremely lowered streetcars with wings and big exhausts tips.

Yanky style : During the 70s and 80s in Osaka area the street fashion became to wear colorful Aloha shirts and pants and this caused the wearers being called Yankees. Most of the "bad boys" were wearing the Aloha fashion and hence the Bosozoku became equivalent to Yankee style. The writing of this style is officially with double ii, Yankii.

VIP style : more or less a crossover between Shakotan and gang cars: extremely lowered luxury vehicles (lots of bling!), filled up with as much novelties as possible and ride on big rims. Sometimes very close to Bosozoku style, however IMO the Bosozoku style is more or less the low budget version of VIP style. Also VIP style tends to use only newer cars while the Bosozoku style uses the older cars from the 70s till early 90s.

Kyusha style : literally means "Japanese old classic car" which in a lot of cases mean it is an old car modified with some (smaller) fender flares, lowered and nice rims under it. So it should not be the same as Bosozoku style.

Grachan or Garuchan : comes from Grand Championships on Fuji Speedway in 70s and 80s. The Bosozoku used to have big meetings on the parkinglots of these events, hence the name. These cars should also match the same bodyshape styling as the cars running on the circuits, with big wide fenders like used on the Super Silhouette styling. So this style should be part of the Bosozoku Style.

So we can conclude that the Bosozoku Style distinguishes from all the styles above; the wild style of the cars combining all styles above! Lowers the cars extremely like the Shakotan; uses big fender flares from the Yanky style; resembles wild bodyshapes from the Granchan style; and adds the wicked exhaust styling from the motorcyles!

Pict: Wikipedia & Bosozokustyle.com