Touge is the Japanese word for “mountain pass” but thanks largely to Initial D and Best Motoring, when we hear it we think of AE86s and S13s drifting through hairpins in midnight battles. Back in the 80s, the touge also saw plenty of two-wheeled action from youths who thirsted for speed and motorized thrills. Today, August 19, is Motorcycle Day in Japan, so let’s not overlook this vital aspect of touge culture.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, mountain roads like Mt Akagi and Okutama Toll Road teemed with sportbikes. The media, police, and observers called them the Rolling Tribes or Rolling Kids, but the riders called themselves simply hashiriya, or “street racers”. The “rolling” referred to how riders leaned their bikes at extreme angles in corners and and scraped their knees on the pavement, giving the impression that the bikes were rolling or rotating through the turns.
Although riders followed unwritten rules, such as not tailgating cars driven by regular folks, their speed antics and loud exhausts still caused an uproar among some citizens. Eventually there were enough accidents and complaints about reckless driving that the authorities added chatter bars — raised horizontal reflectors along lane marker lines — or closed certain roads altogether at night time.
As a result, the number of riders began to decline over the 90s. Fortunately, some documentaries about the Rolling Kids survived, and we can immerse ourselves in the culture through these videos. Happy Motorcycle Day from JNC!
Back when I lived in Okayama, there were three local roads which used to be popular with hashiriya back in the 80s and 90s- Washuzan Skyline, Tanematsuyama, and Kinkozan.
Those roads are relatively quiet these days but every once in a while you’ll see an old-school rider who really knows what they’re doing. I would often see a completely thrashed Honda NSR250 at Washuzan that looks like it came straight out of these old videos. I also once spotted a guy on a brand new Yamaha R1 scraping his knees at Kinkozan, which is by far the sketchiest of the three.
I’d rent a 250cc 4-cylinder Kawasaki ZX-25R to rip around once a month or so, doing my best hashiriya impression. I didn’t have the skill / courage / Japanese language skill to talk my way out of getting arrested though.
Here’s another great documentary; it’s all in Japanese but it does a good job showing the culture at the time from different perspectives- the riders, their parents, the police… There’s even a former street racer turned professional
https://youtu.be/wLQKr0lc3Kg
History tells us something like the 1988 Honda NSR 250 RR was the closest thing to a customer-class street bike… and the peak of the increase in accidents in Japan. Remember that many 400cc versions had limited strokes for the Japanese market, so it wouldn’t be illogical for this scenario to be part of those stories.
This year I rented a car in Japan for the very first time. Instead of highways and big cities, I chose winding mountain roads — through Kiso Pass, Nagano, and Komatsu.
What really amazed me was spotting several vintage Kawasaki motorcycles, all in concours-level condition. Even more impressive, they were ridden calmly and respectfully, fully following traffic rules and speed limits.
Seeing machines that are 30–50 years old, perfectly preserved and still out on the road, was an absolute joy.