I'm off to see a Keirin race...

Racist

@Hippy.. the t-shirts were the nicknames of some of the racers, apparently

Squoocher.
Will you read me bedtime stories.
I found that absolutely fascinating. True or false, I don't care.

Great stuff Pete!

Squoocher.
Will you read me bedtime stories.
I found that absolutely fascinating. True or false, I don't care.

I'd love to read you bedtime stories. I have so many tales to tell from the keirin circuit, so many stories, indeed indeed, but please have patience with me, i am but an old man and my memory is not what it was, i mean to tell the truth i really do, but sometimes mendacious whimsy gets the better of me. what time do you go to bed? i usually turn in at 9. 9.30 on a wednesday. good night sir. oh and i wouldn't say no to horlicks. and battenburg.

pete, i love those photos, best keirin pics ever, i'm amused and intrigued by the 'muscular black' packaging. i can only assume it refers to that black nag... it is awesome, it still amazes me that these so-called former keirin/NJS bikes (the nags, the bridgestones, procyons, 3renshos, giros etc) we ride on the streets of london's famous london are taken back to japan every year and reconditioned for keirin races. Apparently, we Brits ride the NJS frames really forcefully and we're heavier than the japanese and so thoroughly punish the frames. When they get our used frames back to the keirin circuit they're so toughened up that they often win. amazing! I didn't realise this (i bought my bridgestone frame 3 years ago) but whoever sells you an NJS frame in japan, has the right to reclaim it and take it back after 3 years. Scary. so just watch out, it's in the contract. in tiny japanese print!!!

Squoocher- you are a wag. I spent 11 years in Japan, man and boy, and own a 'rentboy' frame. Little do the fashionista realise that they come directly from Tsukumo-san's workshop with blue eye shadow and a small squirt tube of (butt) lubricant.... I still have the eye shadow...
I have just had my frame fixified, and breath easy 'cos it's originally a road frame and I don't have to give it back after the 3-year period (it's a bit of a shock I've heard when the NJS ninja burst into your Bethnal Green crib at 3 in the morning demanding your Nagasawa.....).
Hugs.....
Uncle Matt

How do you squooch this stuff out of your mind?

Well Oliver Schick, as it happens I'm glad you've asked. My interest in Keirin racing and NJS frame manufacture stems from the mid-1990s when I was visiting professor of international sociology at Tokyo University, not long after Aum Shinrikyo's deadly sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo Metro. While the group's anti-government agenda has been pored over, the cult’s links to the keirin circuit, and one rider in particular, has never properly been examined. Until now.
Tokyo at this time was ripe for unrest: a weak yen combined with a wave of industrial action to create the so-called ‘blue-collar’ mini-recession, the knock-on effect of which was tumbling gate and gambling receipts at Tokyo’s keirin velodromes.
Under pressure from venue owners and bookmakers, the starchy NJS relaxed its rigid anti-sponsorship policy to attract advertisers and widen the sport’s fan base.
The first keirin superstars were created, riding a lucrative wave of chat show appearances and product endorsements; the pop charts were even briefly troubled by the R&B-lite stylings of ‘The Makino All-Stars’ single ‘The Possibility For Victory is Limitless’.
But the economic malaise also reawakened a grassroots radical movement, dormant since the late-60s student uprisings. It was in this hotbed of extremism that Aum Shinrikyo was forged. At first the group – mainly science and medical graduates - targeted keirin venues, a magnet for laid-off manual labourers and dock workers; the flyers the group handed out to the crowds and the fly posters that spread like a day-glo rash on stadia walls cannily featured a customized version of the 3Rensho logo, which features an interwoven trio of circles.
In Japanese society, a similar three-ring symbol denotes the anarchist movement. Much of Aum Shinrikyo’s propaganda material featured a deft blend of insurgent maxims and, framed inside these three rings, the portrait of the biggest keirin super-rider of them all, Masamitsu Takizawa, charismatic Team 3Rensho lead rider and winner of all 1994 Group 1 titles.
Dubbed ‘The Lord of the Rings’ by fans, he was a powerful athlete who milked the crowds, often riding into velodromes dressed in a fur ‘hobbit’ tracksuit as his kitsch theme tune blared out.
At this time, Ikuo Hayashi, the Aum Shinrikyo leader, was a psychotherapist at Keio Hospital. In late 93 he had secured a job as chief sports psychologist at the Japan Keirin Association, a position that brought him into contact with riders, including Takizawa, whom he befriended.
Intriguingly it seems Hayashi was more than a little star-struck by his ‘pet’ rider. Police photos used as evidence at his trial show the walls of his apartment festooned with a mix of anti-establishment slogans and keirin fanboy paraphernalia, including scarfs, posters, hot water bottles and calendars featuring Takizawa.
However, there was a chilling motive behind the leader's involvement with the racer: he planned to light a fire under the combustible mix of keirin imagery and anti-establishment idealogy they had fomented. The spark they hoped would provide the flash point was psychoactive nerve agents dispersed within Keirin stadia city-wide that would drive race-goers into a state of delirious suggestibility. To do this the group needed an ‘inside man’ to galvanise disaffected keirin race-goers and spread their apocalyptic message to society at large.
Tragically, it seems that at some point in the summer of 1994 Takizawa fell under the spell of Hayashi and his cohorts.
Although Takizawa vehemently denied any collusion when I spoke to him at his lakeside retreat in Sapporo, insisting that he had complained on numerous occasions to the authorities about Aum Shinrikyo’s unauthorized use of his image, CCTV footage I have obtained from several Tokyo keirin venues shows the rider talking and joking with Hayashi and his cohorts.
At one race, at the Keiokaku Velodrome, on July 4, Takizawa can be seen making a 'three-ring' gesture towards a section of the crowd where Hayashi and several of his acolytes are gathered. This is thought to be a signal for them to initiate the release of the gas.
At another, while the other riders are warming up track-side, Takizawa appears to rummage in his tracksuits pocket before running the perimeter of the stadium, performing his ‘hobbit dance’ and gesturing with his arms as if to whip his supporters into a frenzy.
Computer enhancement shows debris falling from his hands and glinting against the dark fur of his tracksuit – most likely fragments of a glass or gelatine gas ampule.
The footage of the race has been removed from the internet and NJS officials I have spoken to deny all knowledge, but the unsettling scenes that unfold are of a crowd rising in unison and chanting '3Rensho' as Takizawa powers his way to an emphatic victory.
Rioting that subsequently erupted outside the stadium was blamed by the press on trade union activists, but similar scenes were repeated across Tokyo velodromes that summer, while a rash of anti-government graffiti was splashed across the walls and doors of government buildings across the city, the political slogans very often indistinguishable from the three-ringed symbols and the names of NJS-approved companies.
On one fateful afternoon in mid-July Takizawa met with a group of riders at the Yogoji Building for a training seminar. The weather had been unseasonably tempestuous all week. Heavy rain had besieged the city and, portentously perhaps, a storm was brewing. The heavy rain and winds had cleared the streets, swelling the number of subway journeys, causing havoc, serious injury and even the death of an elderly man trying to board a train on the Toei Subway. The Mayahawa fish market had closed for the day out of respect for six fishing boat crews that had perished in heavy seas, and many TV and radio stations were out of action. Meanwhile looters had taken control of pockets of the city’s Jimazaki prefecture. In one instance, rioters used a multiple vehicle pile up on the Yogahoma expressway to pilfer electric goods from shopping precincts. Takizawa had wrapped up warm for the seminar, taking a circuitous bus route north from his home in Benato to avoid the worst of the floods. But tragically he never made it. He had jizzed in his pants.

wow. fascinating story. an insight into Japanese culture which makes England really seem like the 'old country' it really is. but what happened next?...... whats the next chapter, ex sociology student needs to hear.

Well ... pants.

That was a truly epic read. Have you thought about publishing?