Illegal Racing on Japan’s Kanjo Loop

We travel to Japan to find out how the next generation of illegal street racers are dodging police and keeping their counterculture alive.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Causer Media. You're listening to the Away Days podcast on
the ground outside reporting from the underbelly with me Jake Hanrahan.
To watch Awaydays documentaries, go to YouTube dot com slash
at Away Days TV. This is part three Speed Tribe

(00:28):
twenty five, Episode one. This podcast is a production of
H eleven Studio and Call Zone Media, Osaka, Japan. I'm
sat in a car that's doing over one hundred miles

(00:49):
per hour on a stretch of road known locally as
the Kanjo Loop. The guide driving is sending a text
at the same time. I'm terrified. I gripped the chair
and the seatbelt, then the back of my own head
as we zoom around the corner at top speed. The

(01:10):
car is a souped up nineties era Honda Civic, the
only car the Kanjo races driving a sack up. Both
the back seats have been torn out to keep the
car as light as possible. This Civic is for racing
on Japan's highways and back ropes. As we speed down
the elevated road of the Kanjo Loop, the street lights
stream past the windows like flares in the night. The

(01:33):
driver shifts the heavy gearstick as if it's part of
his extended anatomy. He grips the wheel with his gloved hands.
The car roars, tires screech, one wrong move and that's
us card punched, dead, mangled, wreck of smoking steel and
burned flesh. But the driver does have control and we
are most definitely alive. Scary, but I can't lie. It's

(01:57):
also exhilarating. We're driving so fast the car shakes every
time the driver weaves in and out of the traffic.
This is not a racetrack dot not in the legal sense.
This is real Japanese street racing. This is kanjo, zoku
or kanjo for sure. Kanjo is not about car park

(02:20):
meetups with shiny alloys and a harmon card and sound system.
This is not a car club you'll find on Facebook.
Kanjo is chaos. It's driving Balaklava's hinge number plates and
civics hit in ninety at three a m. It's street
racing in its most defiant form. This racing culture centers

(02:42):
around the Hanshin Expressway loop here in Osaka. It's kind
of a ring road, a circular elevated highway that cuts
through the city like a racetrack, built by accident from
ground level. Its snakes throughout the city like a huge
concrete dragon. It's a pretty incredible thing of architecture. Now,

(03:02):
at night, when the traffic thins out and the city
is mostly asleep, the Hanshin Expressway transforms into the Kanjo Loop.
This highway becomes the battleground for civic cruise to race
and taunt the police. Kanjo Zoku started in the late

(03:26):
eighties and early nineties. Back then, Japan's economy was absolutely booming.
After getting smashed a bit by the nukes in World
War Two, Japan rebuilt itself. First. Of course, they had
the help of the US, which began pouring money into
the country's new leadership during the Korean War. But the

(03:46):
Japanese have a very hard work ethic, and so they
hit the ground running, saved a lot, and focused on
tech and manufacturing cars electronics in heavy industry. But the
nineteen seventies, companies like Sony, Toyota, and Panasonic were becoming
household names all around the world. But the real explosion

(04:07):
came in the eighties. Thanks to loose policy and even
looser rules around money, credit and a culture of corporate loyalty,
the Japanese economy went into overdrive. Banks were lending like crazy.
Everyone was investing in the stock market or pouring money
into property. It created a giant asset bubble. At the peak,

(04:30):
the Japanese stock index hit nearly thirty nine thousand, nineteen
eighty nine. It wasn't just financial though. The whole vibe
of the era was go fast, spend lots, accumulate, accumulate, accumulate.
To give you an idea of the abundance of the time,
Japan began buying up iconic American assets such as Columbia

(04:53):
pictures in the Rockefeller Center. Japanese fashion, cas and consumer
tech were everywhere. Some even speculated that Japan might overtake
the US as the world's top economy. This was the
wild backdrop for the beginnings of the Kanjo street culture.
There was a surge of young bard petrol heads with

(05:15):
time and a chip on their shoulder as they saw
the whole country getting rich. The Kanjo scene came from this.
It was kind of like a spot, kind of like
a gang and everything else in between. Crews would take
to the Kanjo Loop at night in heavily modified hondas,
weaving through the traffic, dodging police and taunting rival groups.

(05:38):
As you can imagine, this was all completely and utterly illegal,
but that's kind of what made it so alluring to
the youth of that era. The Kanjo CRUs in turn,
had respect, an air of danger and non stop street cred.
Here in Asaka. At the center of it all, there
could only be one car, the Honda Civic old school

(06:02):
high revving featherweight Civics from the ef EG and EK generations,
built from the late eighties to early two thousands. These
are the cars that Kanjo began with and now the
ones they still roll with. The use of the Civic
was a perfect emblem of the movement. It was cheap,
fast and deadly nimble on a tight highway circuit. With

(06:24):
a few modications like a stripped interior, coil overs, semi slicks,
and a roaring B sixteen or B eighteen engine, you've
got something that can run circles around almost anything else
on the road. It's the perfect vehicle for the Kanjo loop.
Good luck to any of the police that tried to
catch up with them. No chance. But it's not just

(06:48):
about speed. As I said, the Civic became the symbol
of Kanjo. These are not pretty show builds or slick
aerodynamic sports cars that banged up race cars, stickered vinyl
rough and with all the comforts model out of them.
The Kanjo Civic is ugly in the most beautiful way possible.

(07:08):
As well as the cars themselves. The other fascinating part
of the kanjo scene is just how tribal it is.
This isn't just a bunch of lads racing around the city.
These are solid, well organized crews, tight knit, disciplined, and
often very secretive. Names like No Good Racing, Temple Racing,
Law Break, and Team Flox a legendary in the scene.

(07:31):
Some of them go back decades. No Good Racing, for example,
is the most iconic kanjo crew in Japan. The name
alone is a giant fock to the public, who deemed
the Kanjo racers as quote unquote no good. The Japanese
police even used their name in anti street racing campaigns
with posters that said don't be like No Good Racing. Obviously,

(07:55):
that didn't work, and it only made their legend grow
bigger and bigger. The series will go to meet Not Good.
Each crew had its own identity stickers, slogans, and color schemes.

(08:19):
Some of them even had connections to Japan's criminal underworld,
specifically the yakuza. Either way, these were not casual hobbyists.
You couldn't just pull up and join. There was a
serious hierarchy, loyalty, respect, rivalries. It's gang culture, but with
a v tech engine. Now, as you can probably imagine,

(08:44):
underground street racing crews in Japan are not that easy
to find. You might see them zoom past you on
the expressway, but that's about it. The car rime in
is being driven by a contact I've made through a
friend of a friend. He's part of one of the
local kanjo crews here in Osaka. He's agreed to take

(09:05):
me to a garage that is kind of a base
for a few of the next generation of kanjo drivers
around here. After the white knuckle ride on the expressway,
we put off the snaking roads and drive for a
while into what is clearly a blue collar neighborhoods away
from the city center. This is not the QT anime

(09:26):
style Japan that weves stupidly stereotyped the whole country to
be like. This is a wear and tear area, hard graft.
Only everyone in this neighborhood works, construction or car paths.
There's no thrills here whatsoever. Every inch serves a purpose,
mostly industrial. We pull up to a garage topped to

(09:46):
away at the back of a small estate. It's around
ten at night now, but business is clearly still open.
The lights are on and I can see the silhouettes
of a few men smoking and chatting outside. How our
guide makes a call and the gates are opened. We
pull in and part behind a row of Honda Civics.
Of course, this is a garage where people come to

(10:07):
get their illegal race cars tuned up and repaired. If,
like me, you find some kind of beauty in the
raw aesthetic of something like a Civic, you will absolutely
love the Caanjo Loop race cars. They are raw, compact,
just perfect. These are cars meant for high speed racing
at night, blurred vision and streaming brake lights on each

(10:31):
door and bonnet. There's a decaled specific to whichever crew
the races belong to. We enter the garage. It's a
borderline cyberpunk scene of stickered civics, removed head gaskets, raised engines,
dust and oil. The yellow halogen bulbs above flicker as
a man steps forward to shake my hand. He's got
bleached blonde hair and visible scars across his face. He's

(10:55):
dressed fashionably with a metal chain around his neck. He
runs this garage for the racers and is eager to
talk about the subculture that he grew up in.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Con I guess kanjo zoku are young speed addicts. It
all started when the kids who were riding in motorcycle
gangs evolved from the bikes into racing the cars. According
to the olders I know, in this subculture, they began
to modify cheap cars like the Civic or even other
cheap cars back then, like the Hachiroku AEE eighty six

(11:25):
or the Starlet. They drive at illegal speeds on the
Osaka Loop road and they'd race around the normal people
in their cars. This is the counterculture in Osaka. It
has been popular with young people for a long time.
During a normal day, these kids who race can be
really quiet and orderly. They don't make trouble, but deep
down they're searching for something extraordinary at that place on

(11:47):
the Loop. I think it's the feeling of being able
to ride however you want that they seek. That's kanjo.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
It's controversial, obviously, the police want to come after you, guys.
They don't want you to be doing it.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Mo Conzo's well, realistically, the number of people street racing
has decreased due to police enforcement. They've cracked down and
have become much stricter. It's become increasingly difficult to race.
Every year. The police have become much harsher, so punishment
is worse. Several years ago there was a big roundup
of conjo racers in which nearly one hundred people were arrested.

(12:20):
After that, no one properly raced for about two years.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
So what will happen to you if the police catch
you running the cando?

Speaker 2 (12:30):
If you get caught running the canjo now, you'll usually
get arrested for what the police call joint dangerous behavior.
That's the charge. The first time penalty is they take
away your license away for two years and give you
a fine. Also, some people have had accidents involving ordinary
people's cars where they abandon their civic and run away.
When that happens, the police come to their homes the

(12:51):
next day. I've heard many cases like this.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
In recent years. The kanjo scene has been decimated by
the police crut down. Understandably, they don't want people flying
around the expressway in excess of one hundred miles per hour.
Legal race tracks have been opened for the racers to
get their kicks, but for many it's just not the same.
If Kanjo is morphed into some kind of legal racing hobby,

(13:18):
it's no longer Kanjo. The underground nature of it and
the cat and mouse chases with the police is what
makes it special for the people involved. In the early
two thousands, the police began to try and contain this
outlaw racing culture. They were tried to catch the racers
on the spot, but it rarely worked. The cando drivers

(13:38):
knew the loop inside out, had fast cas and were
usually gone long before the sirens kicked in. But things
changed when the police started to play the long game.
Instead of chasing, they started watching. High end cameras were
set up around the highway and undercover traffic units began
quietly tracking the races. They grab license plate numbers, follow

(14:01):
the cars home, and then start building proper cases. Honestly,
the police were pretty smart about it. They waited, watched,
and then picked people off one by one, often at
home in quiet raids. Sometimes these came even weeks after
the illegal races, the police went after more than just

(14:21):
the drivers too. Tuning shops that were known to help
modify the kanjo cars like the one we've just been
in started getting police visits. If you were selling illegal
exhaust systems or helping tweak their ECUs off the books,
you were on the radar of the cops. A few
shop owners even got hit with charges for aiding illegal racing.

(14:45):
The police were not messing about. At the same time,
public pressure started building. Videos of the races were all
over the internet, flashy clips showing cars weaving through traffic
at crazy speeds. People were not happy. Understandably, regular drivers
did not want to get killed on their commute, and

(15:06):
the government didn't want to be seen letting it slide.
So the crackdown kept on going. Things got worse. More surveillance,
more arrests, more cars impounded, more pressure on the whole
kanjo scene. Now, in a way, this was very effective
in crushing the scene, but at the same time it

(15:29):
forced it to evolve. Many rival crews joined forces by
establishing networks and friendships to let each other know where
anti kanjo measures were placed on the highways they race.
This was completely new. Before they absolutely hated each other.
Now they had to work together, and so the people

(15:50):
still involved are the most hardcore of the hard core.
Threats of arrest don't seem to phase them, even in
a country with a conviction rate of over ninety nine percent.
The police's illegal street racing crackdowns aren't just focused on Kanjo,
though there are several different underground street racing scenes and
styles here in Japan. The bigger threats from law enforcement

(16:15):
and also the crashing economy has created a new generation.
Amidst all of these racing styles in Japan, we plan
to document as many as possible. Later that night, I

(16:40):
head out on foot to find a building adjacent to
the loop. I want to find a high point to
get an idea of the scale of this road that
underneath is huge. As a walk along the pavement at
ground level, the road above looms over everything. Huge metal
and concrete pillars rise up here and there to support
the loop. With the help of a local, I find

(17:02):
a nearby building with an open door, explain what I'm
trying to do, and one of the residents kindly unlocks
a door from the stairwell to a small office that
has a balcony. From this vantage point, I can see
the Kanjo Loop wind throughout the city. It's like a
huge concrete serpent climbing through the urban landscape. Suddenly I

(17:30):
hear the high speed gearshifts of two cars driving way
too fast. I can't see them from here, but I
can hear them Kanjoe Zoku. Before the loop was this
neon lit racetrack for modern civics. The road was a
key infrastructure development that transformed a saca's urban transit system.

(17:54):
As I mentioned earlier, Japan underwent rapid economic recovery after
World War Two. This included a massive focus on infrastructure.
For the nineteen sixties, traffic jams had become a major
issue in big cities like Osaka. Roads were narrow and
car ownership was increasing rapidly due to the economic bubble.

(18:16):
The government and private companies like Hanschin Expressway Company stepped
in to build high capacity elevated roadways throughout the city,
and so the Hanschin Expressway system the Kanjo Loop began
construction in the early nineteen sixties. It was a response
to the nineteen sixty four Tokyo Olympics boom in Japan's

(18:40):
growing economy in Asakka, planners imagined a ring road style
expressway that would loop around the central commercial districts. This
circular route would ease traffic by connecting various outward roads
and relieving pressure from the ground level street network, and
so the Kanjo Loop was built primarily between nineteen sixty

(19:02):
four and nineteen sixty nine. For the shear's scale and
ambition of the project, that wasn't bad time at all.
The loop forms a seven and a half mile circular
route cuts through Asaka's central areas. During construction, the loop
had to be elevated above a crowded, built up city,

(19:23):
requiring meticulous planning to minimize disruption. Surrounded by homes, roads,
and commercial businesses, the loop was built on large reinforced
concrete legs to fit in and around the area. Had
they not done it this way, they would have had
to demolish huge swarths of buildings. As it is, most

(19:43):
of the road hobvers ten to fifteen meters above ground level.
It's a site to behold, and whilst this obviously wasn't planned.
The expressway is designed like the perfect racetrack for rogue
canjo drivers. Many of the curves and owners are sharp
and require extreme precision driving. This makes it ideal for racing,

(20:06):
but also incredibly risky. There are over a dozen tightly
spaced on ramps and off ramps, often requiring sharp merges
and quick acceleration. These ramps contribute to the loop's notorious
difficulty at high speeds. This road was never designed for
cars to be hitting it at one hundred miles an hour,

(20:28):
especially with the low visibility. Pretty much the entirety of
the loop as high walls, sound barriers, and narrow lanes.
For the street racers, these features just add to the
thrill of the Kanjo experience. The danger blows their hair back.
For the nineteen seventies, the loop was fully operational. It

(20:51):
became a crucial part of a sucker's transit puzzle, especially
for commuters and commercial vehicles trying to avoid the city
center congestion, and as we know, it also became a
makeshift underground racetrack. Now, some people will tell you that
Kanjo Zoku is dead, It's done, no one really raises anymore,

(21:14):
but that is simply not true. There are several different
crews still active, and some of them are even growing
as they remain largely in the shadows. There are dozens
and dozens of crews or teams still, but the main
ones are forever remembered and refused to disappear. Kanjozoku dot
Com and excellent resource on this world with first hand

(21:36):
and second hand sources, has documented this well. They're right quote.
Since the late seventies, there have been many many teams
that have either ran on the Loop or claimed to
have had. Some of these teams still exist to this day,
whilst others have been ingrained into the asphalt of the
Loop itself and faded into local folklore, so to speak.

(21:58):
To look at some of the estab names we can
speak of, No Good Racing formed in nineteen eighty five,
and that uses their ever so tongue in cheek motto
of bye by police, a pretty self explanatory statement of
their intentions should they be met by any form of
resistance by local law enforcement. The first senior of No

(22:19):
Good Racing said that when he was racing in his
earlier years, people would say it was No Good and
it became a sort of running joke that stuck and
became the team's name. Of course, as the group would
go on to become one of, if not the most
well known group. The name took on other meanings, but
we can leave that to your imagination. How about Temple Racing,

(22:40):
formed in nineteen seventy eight in the Higashi Shimiyoshi area
of Asaka. That's right, teams had a home turf, so
to speak, so being careful and respectful in another area
of the city would mean avoiding confrontation, either from another
team or again the Red Siren Crew the police. The
team name derives from the character Simon Temple from the

(23:03):
English TV series called the Saints, a popular character used
in the team's style at the time. Other names such
as Warp Racing formed in nineteen eighty two. They are
well seen across social media as the current group of
players attend such tracks as the Central Circuit in Hiogo
Prefecture or again Suzuku Circuit over in My Prefecture. But

(23:28):
that's not to say they don't appear in the nighttime
of the city in any one place. The resonation of
B series engines coming and disappearing in a flash to
provide just a glimpse of how many teams there are
or were. Some names we can talk about are no
good Racing, Temple Racing, Warp Racing, Late Riser, Law Break Checker,

(23:50):
Top Gun Racing, Magnuani Racing, Borough Racing, Crafty Dust, Fairness, Fantasy,
Fine Formation, Get Chapin Racing, Get On, Child Hampty, Joker Racing,
Kaiser Loop, Loose Racing Loop in Mercury, and so and
so it goes on and on end. Quote. Clearly, there

(24:11):
are many different crews here in Osaka, but they don't
exactly stand around advertising what they do when they're not racing.
I want to sit down with one of these major
players and try to ride along with them in a
proper underground race on the Kanjo Loop. A friend of mine,
a local, is helping us due to the illegalities of
Kanjo and his strong ties to it. I want to

(24:34):
keep him very anonymous. We'll just call him John. John
has various connections with different crews across the city. He
knows what he's talking about, and he knows what he's doing.
He was around in a time when Kanjo Cruise would
have full on gang fights, various meetups if there was
ever a dispute. He's old school, So John reaches out

(24:55):
to various different crews for us to try and meet
he vouches for us. We have a hit history of
not fucking anybody over when it comes to anonymity, and
we cover underground countercultures properly. It's all good. Eventually we
get a call. There are a few lads who are interested.
I can't say which group it is why will become

(25:16):
clear later, but we're told to head out and meet
them at a garage a late one night on the
outskirts of Osaka. We drive over and meet a few
lads in what looks like a completely normal mechanics center,
mainstream equipment, regular cars, nothing particularly out of the ordinary,
and nothing that screams kanjo. Turns out, though, that this

(25:38):
garage moonlights as a base for various illegal underground racing
crews across the city. Backroom deals for band off the
books equipment take place here. The next generation of Kanjo
is very much hidden in plain sight. After we shake
hands and exchange pleasantries, some of the guys at the
garage usher us into a room behind a row of

(26:01):
kas in various states of repair. The main guy, we'll
call him Himari, has an aura about him that's unmatched.
He's scruffy, short, skinny, and he looks as if he's
just woken up at all times, but he has this
air about him that just tells you this is the guy.
He doesn't even need to make an effort. It's just him.

(26:22):
He chain smokes as he makes us tea in the
back room and invites us to sit down in the chairs,
which are all old repurpose civic seats. This room is
decorated with old car parts, withered racing posters, and a
half dozen ash traits. The lads inside are all linked
to Kando directly. The super friendly and happy to help us,

(26:44):
but they're also very cautious due to the level of
police crackdown. After some chatting, tea, drinking, and what seems
to be about a thousand cigarettes, Himari makes a phone call.
When he's done, it's good news. One of the big
bosses of one of the biggest kanjo crews in a
Soaca is willing to meet us tomorrow night. We'll get

(27:06):
dinner with them. They'll decide if we can race alongside them.
The young guys are editing in the foot so that
today go very well. Next week we'll discover the surprisingly

(27:37):
close connection that canjo racers have to organize crime you've
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com slash at away Days TV. Your Wait Days podcast
is a production of H eleven Studio for Cool Zone Media. Reporting, producing, writing,

(28:03):
editing and research by me Jake Hanrahan, co producing by
Sophie Lichterman, Music by Sam Black, Sound mixed by Splicing Block.
Photography by Johnny Pickup and Louis Hollis. Graphic design by
Laura Adamson and Casey Hifield.