TEAM: Gekokujou

November 17, 2008 12:30 am Published by

The closest translation of “gekokujou” into English is “when a junior dominates his senior”, but in the case of car club Gekokujou, it probably has a meaning closer to “mutiny”.

Gekokujou recently held a track day at Fuji Speedway to celebrate one of their older members “graduating” from drifting and leaving the club. It was very much a casual affair, with the majority of drivers on the day being part of the same circle of friends who just drift because they enjoy doing it together, but that didn’t stop us coming along and joining in the fun.


The favoured cars of Gekokujou are large four-door sedans, such as this Nissan Laurel.

There were still plenty of other types of cars at the event though, such as this AE86 Trueno with a colour-coordinated duct-tape job on the rear quarters. Unfortunately, his engine started spitting a lot of oil into the catch-can at about midday, so he had to retire.



This was one of the typical Gekokujou cars, a crossover drift/VIP/bosozoku JZX100 Cresta.

This C33 Laurel had an interesting face conversion, with the owner deciding on a more luxury-oriented C35 Laurel Medalist grille, instead of the more sporty Club S version.




Like many other drift Laurels in Japan, the RB engine had been swapped for an SR20.


This very clean Vertex 180SX had an extremely quiet 1JZ conversion. The turbine whistle was louder than the exhaust, and even that was hard to hear over the squealing tyres.

Towards the afternoon, the Gekokujou guys and girls had their “graduation ceremony”. As you can see, they’re not the types to take things seriously.

You may have seen this type of baggy clothing before, and might be wondering why it seems so popular in Japan. Worn day-to-day by construction workers, these pants, called “nikkapokka”, which a bad pronunciation of the word “knickerbocker” (think about old American baseball uniforms), are popular with young men, since they have a tough-guy image, especially when there’s a big group of them standing around.

Gekokujou’s fashion, combined with the pseudo-luxury style of their cars, the “kyojitsuki” historic Japanese flag and the meaning of their club’s name projects a very purposefully blue-collar image. Thing is though, I’ve never before seen a group of guys have quite this much fun at a track day.


Tags: ,

Categorised in:

This post was written by Alexi

3 Comments