Speed Tribes: Days and Nights with Japan's Next Generation is a 1994 anthology book by Karl Taro Greenfeld. A collection of nonfiction short stories about the decadence and disaffection of urban Japanese Gen X youth during the early 1990s in the last years of the Bubble Economy, ''Speed Tribes'' was widely reviewed in international media.

Summary

Each story in ''Speed Tribes'' focuses on the life of a specific Japanese youth in the aftermath of the

Japanese asset price bubble The was an economic bubble in Japan from 1986 to 1991 in which real estate and stock market prices were greatly inflated. In early 1992, this price bubble burst and Japan's economy stagnated. The bubble was characterized by rapid acceleration o ...

collapse. Its subjects include a young

Yakuza , also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media, by request of the police, call them , while the ''yakuza'' call themselves . The English equivalent for the ter ...

member, a nightclub hostess, an office girl, a motorcycle gangster, a hacker, an ultra-right-wing nationalist, and ' Choco Bon-Bon', a porn star. Popular 1990s rock band Zi:Kill appears in a chapter that documents the writer's time spent with the band and the events that nearly caused their break up. Greenfeld wrote ''Speed Tribes'' while working as a reporter in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

in the late 1980s and early 1990s. ''Speed Tribes'' is written in a literary style, and has been cited as an example of

New Journalism New Journalism is a style of news writing and journalism, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, that uses literary techniques unconventional at the time. It is characterized by a subjective perspective, a literary style reminiscent of long-form non- ...

. In interviews Greenfeld has freely admitted that many of the characters in ''Speed Tribes'' are not real individuals, and that the stories in ''Speed Tribes'' are a mixture of secondhand stories and original reporting.

Reception

Writing for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', Alan Poul reviewed the book unfavorably, focusing on its "tough guy" language, inconsistent narrative choices, inaccurate descriptions, and an approach to reporting Japanese culture that reduced the stories to "simple, cynical morality plays". Dennis Romero of the

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

criticized ''Speed Tribes'' for its "bad writing, shaky structure and strange characters," but favorably noted that "Greenfeld turns over the cold, hard stone of Japanese culture and finds life beneath." Kirkus Reviews called ''Speed Tribes'' a "tense and spicy read," but concluded that it was "dragged down by heavy-handed writing." In ''Japan Quarterly'', Janet Goff noted "the uneven quality of the stories" but observed that the book added an important perspective on modern Japan. A review by Margaret Scott in ''

Asian Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal Asia'', a version of ''The Wall Street Journal'', was a newspaper that provided news and analysis of global business developments for an Asian audience. Formerly known as ''The Asian Wall Street Journal'', it was founde ...

'' questioned Greenfeld's motives in writing the book, calling the author "shrewdly opportunistic" and summarizing the book as "pretentious pessimism". Kodansha bought the

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

translation rights to ''Speed Tribes'' shortly after publication, but a

translation has never been published.

References

{{Reflist Books about Japan