As Japan's automotive industry began to flourish in the 1960s and produce sporty cars, Japanese enthusiasts took to the country's stunning mountain roads to race one another, often in highly modified machinery - and driving in such a fashion grew in popularity and spread to urban expressways.
Supposedly some street racing clubs had codes intended to protect the public as much as possible, with members haunting the small hours and frowning upon those weaving through traffic. But of course such activity was nevertheless illegal, and an arrest could result in serious prison time and the end of a career. Yet the scene was quick to grow and won a cult following in the West.
Participants weren't just boy racers in uglified hot hatches but committed enthusiasts who could afford tech-heavy, turbocharged JDM coupés and even European supercars. Among them was the Yoshida 'Blackbird', perhaps the fastest Porsche 911 in the world.
Enjoy full access to the complete Autocar archive at the magazineshop.com
Its owner belonged to probably the most famous group of all, Mid Night Club, whose barrier to entry was a car capable of doing 250kph (155mph) - and this was in the early 1980s.
By the turn of the century, Japanese street racing had inspired many TV shows, films and video games. So when our Chas Hallett was in Japan in 2003, curiosity got the better of him and he headed to the infamous Daikoku service station one Friday night. There he found himself among hundreds of tricked-out performance cars and petrolheads - not to mention techno DJs and fast food vans. It felt like a festival, not a criminal gathering.
Hallett had arrived not in a weedy hire car but in a 740bhp R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R, driven by a member of Top Secret Club (no corporate risk assessments back then...) in convoy with a 650bhp Toyota Supra, a 400bhp G35 Skyline and a 430bhp Nissan Fairlady Z.
"It's a pretty intense place to be," he wrote. "There's never more than a three-metre gap between any of the cars as we start slicing through the late-night traffic, passing mere mortals whichever side is easiest."
The toll booth for entry onto the Wangan expressway soon appeared. "Mokoto pockets his change and nails the Nissan away from the booth. Violent. Each gearchange slams my torso way back into the Recaro, even though I'm wedged in a full racing harness. You don't just hear that heavily modified 2.6-litre straight six either, you feel it. Every point of contact I've got, right on through to my fingers tightly gripping the grab handle, throbs and vibrates in tune with Mr Koyanagi's right clog."
This was despite the fine for doing 150kph in a 100kph zone having recently risen fivefold to £2500 and the penalty for hitting 300kph being a lifetime driving ban and the possibility of six months behind bars.
In fact, just a week before we attended, Daikoku had been raided. "There's too much heat from police," lamented Akiko Yamamoto (one of the few female attendees), telling Hallett it would be the last showing for her Lexus Altezza.
Little wonder, then, that a similar 2005 Autocar article by Bill Thomas was titled 'The Last Samurai'. He was introduced by the anonymous president of Mid Night Club to a Mr Kobayashi, the fastest driver of the Gorugo club - "the fastest and most committed of them all" but recently forced to disband by the authorities. Kobayashi's record average speed for the 50mph-limited Tokyo ring road, driving his 550bhp modified GT-R, stood in the triple figures.
Hurtling through the 9.6km Chiba tunnel beneath Tokyo Bay, "Kobayashi is a picture of perfectly still concentration", wrote Thomas. "After a short time, he smiles and holds up three fingers: 300kph. It's a strangely peaceful moment, and the sound from the flat six in that concrete tube will haunt me forever. Retirement must have come hard for the fastest street racer of them all."
Street racing in Japan does still exist, but it is greatly diminished. Even the Mid Night Club has now switched entirely to circuit racing. This enables its members to more reliably establish who has the best car and the sharpest skills, so they say, but the decision was also taken because of the increased prevalence of dashcams (not that any member was ever actually caught by one).
For the best, of course - but what a fascinating milieu there once was.
Add your comment