1

Rogelio Gregorio S. Alegado

Ms. Mary Ann Marchadesch

ENG 111- Purposive Communication

28 November 2020

Hashiriya: The Art of Street Racing

Japanese Street Racing was never the typical criminal activity you see immature

juveniles with driver’s licenses do with their cars whenever they got bored from doing dope,

getting wasted, and likely eloping with the opposite sex. To those who belonged deep in the

community and the drivers who raced the passes, it was an art form that involved refined

technique and an amalgamation of experiences that brought together individuals of different

backgrounds together by their vehicles and love for the thrill of driving fast and precise on public

roads on wee hours of the morning, almost always illegally. This paper will discuss about

Japanese Street Racing, the media and medium that popularized it, and it’s legacy to modern

car culture and popular culture; all from the perspective of a boy who grew up very close to a

culture that would otherwise be very distant from his own.

KAKUSEI (AWAKENING)

How I Got into It. They say if you want to train kids to do something, you start them young;

exactly what my dad did to me when he got me into cars and automobiles as a whole. He would

take to yearly car shows like the Manila International Auto Show and various car meets that we

happened to come across, monthly car repairs where he would show me the bloody parts how a

passenger car is to be maintained, to visiting Toy Kingdom to buy the year’s latest Tomica

models and Hot Wheels collections and would get me films and documentaries that had

anything to do with cars (whether that would be about normal passenger cars or about

experimental rockets on wheels masquerading as “cars”).

Based on what one can read from the previous page, you can tell that my dad really wanted me

to get interested in cars, and that played a huge role in me still being a car guy all these years; it

had been 12 years since then, probably even longer considering that’s all based on my memory.

From there it would get deeper and deeper, as I would be reading in C! andTop Gear magazines

late into the night, watch Top Gear replays and 5th Gear episodes in my lola’s house on the

weekends, draw crude-looking pictures of the Nissan Skyline R34 GTR, begging my cousin to

play Gran Turismo 3 on her PS2. It had been months of doing all of this and my Awakening (or

Kakusei in Japanese) would happen.

Rebirth | Reformation. The year was 2008, I was at home watching cheesy Filipino soap operas

with my maid, my brother was doing god-knows-what, and my parents just happened to arrive

home from work. They happened to pass by an anime convention at the time and happened to

pick up a copy of this CD with weird East-Asian writing with a big letter “D” next to it. Next to that

text was a picture of some animated teenager sitting on top of what looked to be a 90’s Toyota

sports car. It was a foreign sight to me at that time, being a 7-year old with no sense of

imagination or creativity, so I left it on my table, unopened, for a few days. Finally, after a few

days, I opened the CD that would lead to my obsession with street-racing anime and Japanese

Street Racing culture.

For the next four years, I would obsess over the various challenges Takumi Fujiwara and his

outdated AE86 would face (that would be the 90s Corolla I mentioned previously which is an

80s car), whether it be facing a more recent Nissan R32 GTR on the downhill or going up

against the series’ smartest drivers in his home territory, or even coming to the realization that

his Corolla will always have its limits and he would have to work around it, and it'd even get to

the point where I would figuratively wet my pants every time a near-mint, left-hand drive Toyota
 3

Corolla Sprinter would fly by or be positioned somewhere at a car meet. Also at that time, I

would become obsessed with the art of real-life Togē (mountain pass) racing and its racers.

Of course 4 years after, one would expect a child to get bored over a singular genre of

obsession, and you would be right; I was so bored by that time. That’s where I began to explore

the other side of street racing and Japanese Cars(seeing that Final Stage wouldn’t be out until

late 2015).

It led me to places such as the Shakotan/Bōsōzoku movement and manga like Shakotan

Boogie (which is essentially slammed cars with plumbing tubes for exhaust manifolds), and the

Bippu culture (which is a localized form of DUB'ing cars with extensive chrome and metallic

paint), both of which I lacked interest in as it was mostly visual mods and nothing performance

was involved (you could probably get why I had an attachment to Initial D by now). And it led to

a familiar anime with a cursed 70s, midnight blue Datsun as the star of the show (with the

otherwise, crazy and youthful owner as a co-protagonist).

This was Wangan Midnight, and I only realized the connection between me and the anime when

I realized there was a series of arcade games in a local Timezone based on this series, which I

happen to be a huge fan of. From there, I started to dig around the lore of Wangan and its cars,

mostly finding out why three morons obsessed with a cursed 70s sports car drive around loops

in a highway system ridden with cars. Of course, I found out the answer eventually as I burned

through the manga and anime but it led me into a deeper rabbit hole that revolved around a

certain club that raced at the same highways as Akio and Reina-chan and the community

surrounding that scene of street racing. That was where I discovered Racing Team Mid Night (or

incorrectly identified as Mid Night Club) and Tomei Racing (also called Roulette Racing in more

contemporary times).
 4

To put it simply, I would like to discuss the impact Initial D and Wangan Midnight made to their

respective categories, which would be Togē Racing and Roulette Racing respectively.

Why only tackle the Tōmei and Togē? I could look like an idiot for only choosing to tackle only

two parts of a very diverse culture, but that’s just the way I intended for this paper to work.

Indeed, Japan has a diverse car culture that most western-influenced audiences like me have

yet to discuss, but the truth of the matter is that only the two aforementioned scenes became

famous household names around the world, not to mention Bippu and Shakotan are more niche

segments of Japanese Car Culture. Also, this format would simplify the paper for me, as I would

need to only focus on two segments of Japanese Street Racing.

TOUSOU (RACER)

What made Initial D click? For Initial D it was quite simple, it was the portrayal of what would

seem like ordinary sports cars and their teams going on huge inter-territory battles on mountain

passes at night. It was simple as that and there was a lot of basis in real-life around it. For

starters, a quick Youtube search can lead to a video about Jeremy Clarkson discussing the

Hashiriya and their antics on Top Gear (0:28-1:31), and it can explain to a westerner about boy

racing in Japan in under three minutes. And the connections don’t stop there, even the locations

in Initial D are all based on real locations that racers have driven on (you can thank Shuichi

Shigeno for his vast research for this one); Mt. Akina being a one-to-one replica/fictionalized

version of Mt. Haruna in Shibukawa, the Jomo-Sanzan Panorama Highway (the usual venue for

the battles in the Anime), the Hakone Turnpike at Final Stage, Mt. Akagi and the Iroha Slopes,

and even the Esso Gas Station that Takumi worked in (albeit the Esso station is located in

Tokyo and not Shibukawa). Shigeno-san didn’t even stop at the locations, it was noted in a

mini-documentary by Albo Agunday that Takumi Fujiwara, his father’s silver Subaru GC8

Impreza, and the Tofu Shop were all based in real life, which all happened to be owned by a
 5

local named Jun Fujinoki, all of which featured in a Drift Hunter BHS Daily Vlog (3:36-14:25). As

a final side-note to all the connections in real life, the father of Drifting and the original Drift King,

Keiichi Tsuchiya, provided editorial supervision and technical advisory to the production of the

anime and manga; on top of making multiple cameos as a family friend to the Fujiwara Family.

Content and real-life references may be enough for some people to make Initial D click for them,

but it doesn’t stop there. Since the anime and manga were under Keiichi Tsuchiya (who also

happens to be an established circuit racer), a good 80 to 90 percent of techniques shown there

are achievable in most real-life scenarios. Examples of these include the Blind Attack (where

the driver exploits the opponent’s blind spot), the Ditch Drop and its variants (where the car’s

inner tires are dropped into a rain gutter to fight centripetal force), and the Inertia Drift (aka the

Scandanavian Flick); all of these can be. All of these techniques were key to most of Takumi’s

victories with the outdated AE86, the caveat being that some of the techniques may be an

exaggeration of what can be done in real life; one big example of this is the Wheel Lift variant of

the Gutter Run because maintaining the wheel lift on tarmac is simply impossible due to the car

immediately dropping once any adjustment is made mid-corner.

Initial D didn’t stop just at the techniques, the tuning for all the characters’ cars are one of the

most accurate depictions of tuning for Togē racing as well (as far as I know). For example, the

AE86’s tuning and some cosmetic modifications were all based on an AE86 Levin owned by

former JTCC driver Akira Iida, down to the very last throttle body assembly and exhaust

manifold; the caveat being the wheels of Takumi’s 86 and the rated redline for the 4A-GEU used

in the car (realistically at 9,000 RPM whereas the anime engine is portrayed at 11,000 RPM);

this article by DriveTribe explains and proves that the AE86’s specs are realistic and doable in

real-life.
 6

What I’m essentially saying here is that for the most part, Initial D is the most accurate depiction

of Togē racing and the culture that surrounds it, not to mention that the execution of it was

period-correct and the slightly exaggerated portrayal of the drivers and techniques made it

entertaining to most viewers to the point that it became a household name in modern-day car

culture and action-based anime. And for most people, that was enough to make it click for them,

myself included.

What made it Wangan Midnight click? Although not necessarily as big a magnitude as Initial D,

Wangan Midnight regardless was a huge click among ordinary people and car enthusiasts

around the world. For starters, unlike Initial D, Wangan Midnight’s locations are all real-life

routes Roulette racers take when going for a spin (whereas in Initial D, some mountain passes

are fictionalized). The Wangan-sen that Akio frequents is the Bayshore Route of the Shuto

Expressway in Greater Tokyo, home to one of Japan’s longest public straight roads. A second

important location for the series would be the Inner Circular Route in the Shuto Expressway,

commonly known as the C1 Loop to local racers. The last would be the mention of the Tomei

Expressway races that happened in the 80s before the popularity of the Wangan, which all did

happen from as early as 1983 at the titular expressway previously mentioned. Another thing

worth noting is the cars being used, for example, the Devil Z that Akio drives is based on a

real-life Wangan race car that belonged to ABR Hosoki Engineering tuning company, except for

the base platform as the ABR car was a 280Z while Akio’s was a 240Z. Regardless of the

platform, the Devil Z was an almost accurate one-to-one replica of the ABR 280Z, from the

engine, engine mods and tuning, down to the suspension and damper bushings. Not to mention

that Jun Kitami (the Z’s creator/tuner) is a mirror image of ABR’s owner and chief engineer,

Masaru Hosoki. Of course, with me mentioning the Devil himself, I cannot exclude the King of

the Wangan, Wangan’s Black Sea-Bird (or Blackbird for short). This car on the other hand is a
 7

one-to-one replica of the Yoshida Special’s’ Porsche 911 Classic with all the bells and whistles

of all the same vehicle. But you would think that it would stop there, but according to the 911

Turbo Yoshida Special History from the archived Mid Night Porsche Works site, the Blackbird

Porsche even has the same backstory as the Yoshida Special’s car, with the car originating from

Germany, the Turbo Package and Sport Aero package being installed from the factory, the back

and forth between Porsche AG and Eiichi Yoshida about the numerous tuning mods done from

the factory and Yoshida’s garage, even the engine swap and addition of ball-bearing turbos

post-factory, the only exception being the engine blow-out from the testing at Tomei. And you

think the cars’ connections stop there, the rivalry of the Blackbird and the Devil Z wasn’t

fictitious. In the manga/anime, the rivalry between the two cars was based on the fate that the

Devil Z will one day defeat the Blackbird, in real-life, Eiichi Yoshida (the Porsche owner) had a

friendly rivalry with Masaru Hosoki (the 280Z owner) and were always trying to outdo each other

in power, which stems from the fact that Hosoki-san was the vice-chairman of the car club

Yoshida-san was chairman in (which we will discuss in a bit). And to sum this all up, the racers

of Wangan Midnight and the tuners they go to are an interpretation of the real-life tuners and

drivers that raced the Tomei and Wangan, further developing their cars and engineering to reach

300 KM/H on public roads and become the fastest on Japan’s circuits. They are known as

Racing Team Mid Night, better known incorrectly as Mid Night Club.

So if you ask me what made Wangan MIdnight, on top of the slightly exaggerated action, tuning,

and driving that the franchise has to offer, it was probably its deep-seated roots with the Tomei

Racers and Mid Night Club. Even the team’s official website (midnightracingteam.jp) confirms

that every part of the manga and anime written by Kusonoki-san is based on the real-life racing

team.
 8

So what really made them click? If you were to ask me to simplify that in one paragraph, it would

be this. The accurate portrayal of the dynamic culture present in both segments of Japanese

Street Racing (both the Tōmei and Togē), the memorable writing and characters done by both

Shuichi Shigeno and Michiharu Kusunoki, and the fact that the media portraying this type of car

culture made it accessible to normal people in Japan and outside the world to other car cultures

of different countries.

MUGEN (DREAM)

How did Initial D influence modern car culture? If you have been on the internet for as long as I

have you have probably seen the Eurobeat Intensifies Animated Music Videos (or AMVs), the

numerous Deja Vu Meme Compilations, and the It was at this moment Shingo knew… meme. If

you haven’t gotten the clue by now, those are all derived from various Initial D episodes, clips,

and music. Even if you don’t know about the anime itself, you have likely heard about the

memes mentioned, regardless of you being a car guy or a normal person with only small

knowledge of memes. Speaking of the music, Initial D can be credited for half the popularity of

Eurobeat; the other half being Eurovision. The rationale behind that would be that most Initial D

memes or “Eurobeat Intensifies” memes have real Eurobeat songs as their soundtrack. Also,

Initial D had Eurobeat as its official soundtrack for the majority of its run as an anime.

On another note, drifting became a household name as a sport because of Initial D, as the

manga and anime’s popularity and accessibility to most people. And with the popularity of Initial

D came the popularity of Drifting and Formula D with Keiichi Tsuchiya founding the sport. This

popularity ended up influencing the sport’s appearance on The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo

Drift, with Tsuchiya, even becoming a technical advisor and stunt coordinator of the film (he also

played the part of a fisherman, with Shuichi Shigeno playing as his fishing buddy). It even came
 9

to the point that Tokyo Drift drew strong comparisons to Initial D because of the story and the

plot elements of both the movie and franchise.

Needless to say, Initial D was to be thanked for making the sport and technique of Drifting, Togē

racing, and one part of Japanese Car Culture.

How Wangan Midnight influenced modern car culture From the time Wangan Midnight had

been published, various Western car magazines began covering the origins of a street racing

team that resembled a certain car gang that vaguely resembled the characters of the manga. Of

course, this led to the Mid Night Club. A club infamous for vandalizing copycat members for

having the Mid Night Special sticker anywhere on their cars, a team well-known to have pushed

the limits of then-current 80s and 90s cars to beyond 300 KM/H (which was a feat at that time),

and a team with an exceptional gentleman’s agreement to take public safety as the biggest

policy and the biggest offense. The only thing about all the things I said was only a few of those

facts were true, and with good reason. According to exclusive information discussed in Donut

Media’s Past Gas Podcasts #5 and #6, the team was far from an ordinary car club with abstract

regulations. The team was, in reality, a vessel for the depth testing of various parts and tuning

methods by tuners to ordinary, run-of-the-mill, Japanese Sportscars (ordinary as the 80s and

90s was a good year to buy local sports cars cheap). Like I had mentioned earlier, these

included people like Eiichi Yoshida of Yoshida Special’s, ABR Hosoki’s Masaru Hosoki, and

apparently, Isami Amemiya of RE Amemiya and his mentor, Smokey Nagata of Top Secret, and

loads more tuners tuning shops. As far as the team’s legend goes, they are supposedly

disbanded after a major collision in an unnamed expressway happened, which happened not

because of the club rather some unlucky members being pestered by a Tokyo-based Bōsōzoku

gang. This was to honor the previous code of conduct mentioned a while ago when in reality, the

group's 1st generation members decided to move on to professional motorsports whilst passing
 10

on membership to a second generation. Those of the second passed the club to a third

generation, which was confirmed on the team’s website (midnightracingteam.jp).

And from there a domino effect happened, with the release of Wangan Midnight anime, several

games by Genki called Tokyo Xtreme Racer, podcasts about conspiracy theories on the club,

podcasts rectifying club facts, a movie tie-in game to The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift

(which ironically on Roulette Racing instead of drifting), several sequels to the Wangan Midnight

franchise and most importantly, Midnight Club (also ironically named after the group’s incorrect

name). This was important as this was one of the very first Western video games to have

focused on Illegal Street Racing and Japanese Street Racing in general, way before EA and

Codemasters decided to tackle it with Need For Speed Underground and Race Driver: Grid

respectively. On top of creating this ground-breaking series, Midnight Club was the first video

game franchise to have ever portrayed Japan in the context of Illegal Street Racing, with some

of the titles even making direct references to the aforementioned racing team. This was huge in

the popularization of Roulette Racing and the previous Tomei races that had preceded it,

essentially making the latter racing categories household names.

How the Japanese redefined modern-day Street Racing With all of this combined, how did it

even impact modern Street Racing? From the memes, the music, the disciplines, and copycat

teams, Japanese Street Racing redefined the way most people saw street racing; from the

typical boy racers with their junkyard rust buckets racing down dimly-lit slums to secluded

groups and individuals refining technique and car tuning on long stretches of roads or mountain

passes in the twilight. From what was once a cheap way to pass time with vehicles from

mommy and daddy’s wallet, eventually became an art form that redefined preconceived notions

of vehicular-based crime.
 11

MUSUBI (CONCLUSION)

To conclude this paper, Initial D and Wangan Midnight left a very huge impression on me as a

growing child and as a fully-grown adult, as it had taught me the importance of competition,

innovation, the constant refinement in technique, and most importantly, Japanese Car Culture.

The series had also redefined the westernized views of Cars and Illegal Street Racing, changing

it from merely a mischievous activity to a reformist art of driving cars quickly and precisely that

happens to be underground. In the long-term, the culture and the franchises would later

influence me to learn about the mechanics of cars, tuning, and certain driving techniques, at the

same time influencing me to have a huge bias on Japanese Domestic Vehicles and

Japanese-designed cars.
 12

Works Cited

“911 Turbo Yoshida Special History.” Mid Night Porsche Works, Mid Night Porsche Works,

cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/470700929419575321/481157447713554442/History.pn

g.

Agunday, Albo. I Met The Real Life Initial D Takumi Fujiwara (Not Clickbait) | Drift Hunter

BHS Daily Vlogs #2. Youtube, Drift Hunters (Albo Agunday), 31 July 2017,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_IoR6nm4dUv.

Blackwell, Joseph, et al. “Unraveling the Mystery of Japan's SECRET Racing Club - Past

Gas #05.” YouTube, YouTube (Donut Media), 22 Dec. 2019,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoq-Ar_rgWc.

Blackwell, Joseph, et al. “What Ended the Golden Age of Japanese Street Racing? - Past

Gas #06.” YouTube, YouTube (Donut Media), 29 Dec. 2019,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wqTtHs4-Xk.

“Deja Vu Meme Compilation.” Youtube, NiciMakiClips, 14 Nov. 2017,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYB4Iz5cXOE.

“Eurobeat Intensifies (MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE).” Youtube, Pakku, 13 May 2016,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=19tJRo1TVXQ.

“It Was at This Moment Shingo Knew...: Initial D.” Know Your Meme, Know Your Meme, 15

Aug. 2018, knowyourmeme.com/photos/1293860-initial-d.

S., Josh. “Mythbusting: Can You Build a Takumi-Spec AE86 in Real Life?” DriveTribe,

DriveTribe, 17 Mar. 2020,

drivetribe.com/p/mythbusting-can-you-build-a-takumi-RaFL5NpSS4SXIYbhGOjSpA?iid=e

2MjXtq3QwaYygJXb9kcng.

“Top Gear's, Jeremy Clarkson, Talks with Tsuchiya Keiichi (The Drift King).” 13 Feb. 2013,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_IoR6nm4dUv. Accessed 29 Nov. 2020.

“ホーム.” Midnight Racing Team Official Site, Racing Team Mid Night,

www.midnightracingteam.jp/about-midnight/.