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Blasting into the past with Japan's thoroughly modern
Mods 
By LOUIS TEMPLADO, Asahi Shimbun News Service 

More than 20 years after its release, `Quadrophenia'
is still inspiring young scooterists. Are these kids
really alright? `The scene attracts a lot of faddists.
But people who come in on a boom don't stay very long.
... What you see here today are the real lifelong,
hardcore Mods.'

There's something positive to be said for living in
huge, impersonal cities, especially one like Tokyo.

You can be a rapper or a rightist, wear a French maid
outfit with a Nazi armband or the entire Louis
Vuitton-Moet Hennessy product line-and no one will
give you a second glance.

So what does a young, struggling fashionista have to
do to get some notice around here?

The answer is easy if you're a Mod: Pull on your Union
Jack-emblazoned army parka, pour yourself into your
stovepipe slacks and ride your mirror-encrusted
scooter in noisy circles around central Shibuya.

Multiply the sound and the fury by 50-fold and you
have one of Tokyo's most colorful spectacles: the Mods
May Day Run.

Now in its 20th year (although no one is really sure)
the rite of spring is an annual blast to the past, as
scores of boys in tight suits and girls in equestrian
helmets and white vinyl go-go boots turn back the
fashion clock to early '60s London, a time when
stylish-and often violent-scooter gangs ruled the
roads.

``We're here for more than just a scooter run,''
explained one serious-faced rider from Shizuoka
mounted on an Italian Lambretta scooter with his
identically dressed girlfriend. ``Mod means cool
music. Mod means cool clothes. Mod is a way of life.''

A group of French tourists burst into laughter as the
noisy parade rolled by-the sight of meticulous young
Japanese imitating British ruffians must tickle the
Gallic funnybone-but there's a case to be made for
Japan's Mods being the real thing. Or if not the real
thing exactly, then being a recreation so unique it's
real in its own right. Call it postmodern Mod.

Helmets offer lots of anonymity, and on any given
weekend Tokyo's roadways are crowded with groups of
riders living their fantasies under their headgear.
Wealthy, jackbooted retirees on Harley-Davidsons play
California Highway Patrolmen; faux Hell's Angels types
flip the bird from choppers bought with credit cards
and Bonneville racers sprint to the next red light.
Add lowriders with pumping hip-hop from their bouncing
Cadillacs, and you've got a wonderful mix.

But the Mods, insist the Mods, leave all these posers
in the dust.

``Japan has changed a lot in the past couple of
generations,'' says Masahiro Hoizumi, editor of
Scooter Style magazine and a major Mod scenemaker.
``But America-longing remains as strong as ever.
People associate American style with rough men on
huge, powerful bikes.

``Mods generally are people who think American
influence is too dominating. Mods culture is
attractive because it's rough but at the same time
refined. Mods aren't dirty.''

Hoizumi (who also sings with the band Mods Freaks)
traces the Japanese Mod movement's roots back to 1979
and the arrival of the British film ``Quadrophenia.''

Inspired by the music of The Who and featuring the
young Sting in his acting debut, the movie was a
concoction of cool clothes, classic scooters and
group-defining violence, as cocky teenage Mods battled
the arch-enemy Rockers.

The film struck a chord, and it wasn't long before the
first Japanese Mods were on the prowl.

``The only problem,'' says Hoizumi, ``was that there
weren't actually any real Lambrettas in Japan at the
time, and if you wanted one you had to bring back one
from Britain or Italy yourself.''

The early Mods instead settled for the next best
thing, small, baby-sized 50cc Vespas, which they
festooned with local bicycle parts and ``dress-up''
chrome accessories meant for sale to Japan's own
indigenous dekotora (decoration truck) fanatics.

But being real means having the real stuff, and as the
Mod scene grew so did the scooter trade.

Today Japan is one of the most active classic scooter
marketplaces in the world, second only to Britain.
There are 10 shops in the Tokyo area alone importing
and selling scooters from Europe and, as numbers have
diminished there, from India, Malaysia and Vietnam. In
fact, parts and paraphernalia that are made only in
Japan are coveted around the world.

``I think they must think we're a bit strange,'' says
Kotaro Furuta, owner of Jungle Scooters, considered
``the'' Mod scooter shop in Tokyo. ``When I go to
Italy I sometimes meet people who refuse to sell to me
because they think Japanese are walking away with a
part of their cultural heritage.

``It's not a problem in Britain, though. They don't
really care, business is business.''

Prices have dropped from the bubble-era levels, but a
fully restored Lambretta TV200, for example, can still
fetch a cool million yen. A Mod will typically spend
another half-million yen on dress-up lamps and
mirrors, and a little more on a custom-tailored Mod
suit.

Hoizumi counts at least three Mod revivals: The
Neo-Mod movement inspired by ``Quadrophenia'' (and
which eventually led to the Skins); an early 1980s
resurgence built around the British group Style
Council (the Japanese Mod scene remains a huge milkcow
for Paul Weller); and a unique-to-Japan revival in the
mid-1990s created by teenage photoceleb Hiromix, whose
snapshots of herself and her friends in undies became
an international artworld sensation.

At its peak the May Day Run drew as many as 300
scooters. This time around there were closer to 50.

``The scene attracts a lot of faddists,'' says
30-something ``Snicker,'' a granddaddy Mod whose
frayed, button encrusted military parka was featured
in the Hiromix book ``Girls Blue.''

``But people who come in on a boom don't stay very
long. What you see here today are the real lifelong,
hardcore Mods.''

Whatever. Yet deep down there are some unusual
parallels between Japan's Mods of today and the
British rebels they style themselves on.

The original ``Modernists'' were a product of the
British class system and postwar prosperity. Attrition
left plenty of jobs for teenagers to fill, and the
youth of the early 1960s found themselves with incomes
to burn.

The kids lived at home and could spend lavishly-on
imported clothes, imported records (at first mostly on
Modern Jazz, thus the name, and later Motown) and on
imported Italian motorscooters, which they needed to
get from club to club.

Fashion was paramount to the Mods, both to distance
themselves from the American-styled, Gene
Vincent-listening ``Rockers'' -who they looked down on
for being working class-and to prove that they were no
different from the posh kids.

So the Mods fought the law-in fact the excessive
mirrors and lamps mocked a regulation requiring
mirrors on scooters. They fought each other; and most
famously they fought the Rockers. Knives and
nightsticks were common, and fish hooks sewn behind
their lapels as a nasty surprise for attackers.

``Quadrophenia,'' in fact, is set around the massive
Rocker versus Mod riots at Brighton during the 1964
May Day bank holiday.

Mod, for the most part, was a working-class
phenomenon.

Japan may be the classless society, but that doesn't
mean everyone earns the same income. Until recently,
Japan's Mods have overwhelmingly come from the ranks
of hairstylists, overworked, underpaid and
image-conscious, who leave the suburbs and countryside
with big city dreams of grooming stars and cutting it
as ``charisma stylists.'' The Mods' scooter
style-featured on CD jackets and blended with Audrey
Hepburn ``Roman Holiday'' iconography-provides
entry-level glamour.

``It's like this,'' says Shunsuke Namiki, a tailor who
specializes in suits for Mods and up-and-coming
celebrities. ``Japanese society is a suit spectrum. In
the center are the regular salarymen in standard
suits. On one extreme are those in loose Italian
suits. On the other are the Mods. Whatever they wear
has got to be tight.''

But the stylists have moved on with the Hiromix boom,
and the Mods of 2002 are a cadre of college art
students, graphic designers and apparel professionals.
Many have had their parents buy their first bikes for
them, and quite a few own several bikes. They seem
more sure of themselves and aren't as interested in
making a class statement as an aesthetic one.

``The Japanese Mod culture is probably based on a lot
of misconceptions,'' says 25-year-old Yukihiro Takao,
who trucked his Lambretta from Osaka for the rally.

```Cool' is a favorite Mod word that everyone uses to
mean `stylish,' for example, without realizing it also
means detached and unsociable,'' he says.

For the 25-year-old art university graduate and
trading house employee, his kaleidoscopic Lambretta is
a ``finished piece of Pop Art'' which he now wants to
match with a new car.

Takao says he saw British Mod culture firsthand while
living in London for a year, but on this May Day Run
he got a lesson on the harder side of Mod life.

The crowds smiled and waved in Shibuya, the cars made
way in Harajuku and the Mods rode on to Kawasaki for a
traditional night of drinking and dancing to Beat and
Ska.

Near the club, however, the group took an unfortunate
turn into a neighborhood full of yakuza-frequented
bars. Mistaken for a genuine gang of bosozoku
joyriders, the pack found themselves surrounded by
punch-perms-and-tracksuit types, armed with golf clubs
and furious at the noise.

``A lot of things go on in your mind when you're
suddenly in a situation like that,'' says Takao. ``And
one of them was how much it all looked like a scene
out of `Quadrophenia.' ... I was wondering what the
movie characters would have done.''

These Mods dropped their bikes and looked down; a pair
that tried to turn down a sidestreet were caught and
beaten; another handed over his license to a man
talking on his cellphone to a higher-up. The club
crowd in front was busy on cellphones of their own.

``I was thinking so many things but in the end I
couldn't move. Maybe we could have tried to defend
ourselves but that would have been crazy,'' says
Takao.

``I mean these guys were professionals, this is what
they do for a living.''

The Mods stayed cool: They pushed their scooters a
couple of blocks away before riding off into the
night.(IHT/Asahi: June 1,2002)


=====
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