ISBN 1-85283-514-1 (UK hbk)

"The boom and bust of the bubble economy of 1980s and 1990s Japan spawned a dazzling variety of subcultures and pop-cultures. In Speed Tribes , Karl Taro Greenfeld, a young Japanese/American reporter, describes what life is like for Tokyo's Generation X. Each chapter represents a day in the life of a scion of the boom years, now living a fast, hustling, thrill-seeking existence in the most automated city in the world. Greenfeld is drawn to the streets and bars of Tokyo where he finds a gritty reality far from the quaint picture postcard Japan. The characters of Speed Tribes are as familiar with hamburgers as onigiri (rice balls), Guns 'N' Roses as ikebana (flower arranging), and folding a bindle of cocaine or heroin as creasing an origami crane.

"The electric, post-industrial, urban landscape includes the young hustlers on the street, working as rank and file soldiers of the fiercely hierarchical Yakuza organised crime families and their teenage stooges, members of the bosozoku motorcycle gangs -- the 'speed tribes' of the title. At the other end of the youth spectrum are the students of prestigious Tokyo University, those feted survivors of 'exam hell' groomed to be leaders of tomorrow's Japan. In the bars, blond, designer-clad hostesses feel they have never had it so good, while in the techno dance clubs, young Japanese office girls in fluorescent micro-wear find a power and autonomy they never can achieve in the workplace.

"In Speed Tribes , Greenfeld paints a dramatically unsettling portrait of a cast of characters living it up in today's city of tomorrow -- Tokyo in the '90s." [jacket blurb, UK hbk, 1994]