Sexy beasts

A cult film about a rugged Romeo in an illuminated truck has spawned a new genre, decotora. The flashy fantasy of many a big-rig driver, these mobile works of art blaze along Japan's highways and into its pysche

A cult film about a rugged Romeo in an illuminated truck has spawned a new genre, decotora. The flashy fantasy of many a big-rig driver, these mobile works of art blaze along Japan's highways and into its pysche

Film-maker Norifumi Suzuki’s works are not renowned for their subtlety. Blood-crazed gangsters and soft-porn schoolgirls appear regularly in the Japanese director’s canon. But having the carnal imagination of a 14-year-old boy hasn’t limited Suzuki’s influence. Sex and Fury, a samurai slasher flick about a scantily dressed female assassin, provided the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, while School of the Holy Beast was dubiously heralded as “Japan’s most notorious nun-exploitation film”.

Yet these achievements pale in comparison with Suzuki’s greatest legacy, which helped spawn an entire subculture. Thankfully, we’re not talking about his 1973 film Terrifying Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom.

In 1975, Truck Yaro! became a smash hit at the Japanese box office. Written and directed by Suzuki with unusual restraint, the movie follows the adventures of a long-distance truck driver. First Star is a rugged bachelor who blazes down the highways leaving a trail of broken hearts in his wake. Truck Yaro! combines low-brow comedy with emotional drama as First Star (played by Bunta Sugawara) gets entangled in romantic scrapes, races rival truck drivers and valiantly rights various wrongs. It was such a successful package, Suzuki made a staggering nine sequels.

But the real star of the series is First Star’s heavily customised truck. Decked out with row upon row of pulsating technicolour lights, the truck has a huge radiator grill that juts from the front while gleaming lengths of piping, steel accessories and luridly patterned metalwork compete to grab you by the eye sockets. Completing the visual assault is a gigantic mural on the trailer – of a flying fish leaping through white-crested waves.

First Star’s truck was an early example of “decotora” – a shorthand expression for decorated art trucks. These customised vehicles first became popular in the early 1970s among truckers in a small pocket of northeastern Japan. But Suzuki’s film was responsible for catapulting this garish trend into popular consciousness. The timing was perfect for such bold exhibitionism. After the painful aftermath of World War II and years of deprivation, Japan had finally recovered its swagger. The economy was powering from strength to strength and a renewed sense of optimism was sweeping the nation. With his brazen confidence and freewheeling spirit, Sugawara captured the prevailing mood.

“Bunta Sugawara was so great in Truck Yaro!,” recalls Ryuji Miyauchi, a Japanese truck driver from Chosi City. “When I first saw the film I really empathised with his outlook. I wanted to model myself on him and his sense of vigour.” Inspired, Miyauchi got involved in the decotora scene and began customising his truck. Twenty years on, it’s clear he’s been busy. Imagine a psychedelic spaceship from a robot planet that’s moonlighting as a Las Vegas casino and you’re halfway to picturing his handiwork.

The body of Miyauchi’s truck is an epileptic’s worst nightmare. More than 800 lights are embedded all over and flicker on and off in mesmerising patterns. On the roof of the cabin he’s attached a cylindrical rocket “to give the impression of volume and speed” and raise the stakes in the phallic bravado department. Offsetting this sci-fi futurism, the rig’s dominant image is a meticulous depiction of the Virgin Mary that sprawls over multiple surfaces.

“I like having the image because I feel like I am protected by her,” Miyauchi explains. Suffice to say, the truck is so extravagantly bonkers it makes a normal lorry seem as interesting as a brown paper bag. Not that the 41-year-old trucker is finished yet. If he can raise the funds, one day he will “gild the body with gold so the truck gets even more beautiful and shiny”. But the truck isn’t just a weekend hobby. Like many decotora owners, self-employed Miyauchi uses his rig to transport goods on a daily basis. The disparity between the truck’s mind-boggling ostentation and humble nature of its work could not be more acute. “I take cardboard boxes and vegetables to the suburbs,” the proud owner says.

Miyauchi is not alone. An entire industry has sprung up in Japan catering to the subculture. Decotora revolves around DIY customisation – you don’t buy your vehicle already tricked out – and there is a range of video games and driving simulators inspired by the trucks as well as monthly magazines providing dedicated coverage of the scene.

Originally, the parts used to modify decotora were salvaged from larger vehicles, such as buses, military vehicles and even boats. These days, specialised accessory-makers sell anything from chrome-plated bumper bars to exhaust extensions and imitation Louis Vuitton seat covers. And there is no shortage of demand for these optional extras.

One area where the owners are prepared to seek help is with the intricate murals on the trailers. Famous decotora body-painters such as Misao Sekiguchi draw customers from all over Japan. Many drivers opt for traditional images such as Buddhist symbols, dragons and tigers, but anime characters and pop singers also crop up. The murals tend to reflect the drivers’ regional backgrounds. Truckers from the Kansai region have a reputation for favouring flamboyant designs while those from the Kanto area prefer classical illustrations.

Decotora’s wild fusion of the futuristic and traditional is characteristic of Japanese culture. This, after all, is one of the most technologically progressive countries in the world but one that’s also intensely proud of its heritage. Moreover, the fact that drivers such as Miyauchi cheerfully fetishise their mode of employment seems fitting in a land renowned for its fierce work ethic. Yet decotora is also informed by a reactionary streak that flows against the Japanese identity.

Not only are these art trucks loud and unapologetically brash, the customisation process ensures no two are alike. This defiant individuality obtains particular value in a culture with such a strong tradition of social conformity. An old Japanese proverb warns “the nail that sticks out is hammered down”, stressing how individualism should be sublimated to group cohesion. It’s a philosophy chillingly depicted in Masao Miyamoto’s bestseller Straitjacket Society, which describes the overwhelming pressure to conform within Japan’s bureaucratic circles.

Photographer Tatsuki Masaru, who spent 10 years documenting the scene, believes decotora should be viewed within this social context: “It springs out of a repulsion for uniformity. The trucker works alone without belonging to a company. This sense of self-reliance and individuality finds its physical expression through decotora.” After following art trucks all over Japan, Masaru released a photography book called Decotora. During his decade on the road, he documented all aspects of the big-rig lifestyle. He recorded commercial trucks loaded with crates as well as recreational vehicles with trailers that were transformed into bedrooms or furnished lounges with dangling chandeliers. Through sudden shifts of scale he conveyed the truckers’ obsessive attention to detail. One photo shows a hubcap decorated with a hand-painted fish rendered in such exquisite detail you can make out every last scale.

Masaru also took a series of intimate portraits of the truckers. He showed the drivers reclining on the florid upholstery of their trucks’ opulent interiors. But what’s interesting about these close-ups is that the drivers are frequently shot alongside their wives and small children. This domesticity runs contrary to Truck Yaro!, a celebration of the lone-wolf lifestyle: First Star’s motto was “a man’s journey is alone”. Masaru says truckers’ families play an unspoken role. Decotora trucks can cost tens of millions of yen so they need the family’s understanding.

The hackneyed image of truck drivers generally involves amphetamines, prostitutes and macho excess. Germaine Greer, for example, in her recent essay On Rage, describes stopping to give a lift to a couple of girls and blithely suggests: “It would have been a rare truckie who would not have extracted his pound of flesh.”

Decotora challenges such lazy cliches. The sophistication and sheer craftmanship of these trucks cast their owners in a far more positive light. Roger Snider, a truck expert from the US, was left dumbfounded by the decotora he saw in Japan. “In my opinion, these guys are artists,” he insists. “The truck is like a large sculpture or a moving canvas. You can’t knock the creativity of these guys – each truck is totally unique.”

Snider, who is working his way across the globe photographing trucks for his glossy coffee-table book Ultra Rigs of the World, is no stranger to impressive rigs. But he wasn’t prepared for his first sight of decotora when he attended a charity rally in the small town of Aichi earlier this year. “It was absolutely incredible,” he recalls. “There must have been 150 trucks there. The lights were all synchronised to music and have repeating and non-repeating patterns – they operate like a carnival or a slot-machine. Inside there are so many toggle switches they look like the cockpit of a spaceship. It was a complete audio-visual experience.”

Snider was also struck by the sense of community among the drivers and says it was unlike anything he’d previously encountered on the trucking circuit. “Most of the guys who show trucks in the States are very competitive – it’s all about getting the number-one trophy. What’s really cool about the decotora scene in Japan is that you’ve got these close-knit art-truck groups who act kind of like gangs but without the violence.”

Nevertheless, the decotora tradition could be under threat. Five years ago, a 10-month-old boy was killed and his mother seriously injured in an accident involving an art truck. The driver failed to see the pair due to a blind spot caused by an accessory attached to his windscreen. Japan’s transport ministry subsequently banned these windscreen plates and began enforcing strict regulations. Before they take to the road, decotora drivers must now prove all customised extras do not compromise their vehicles’ safety.

But the greater challenge to the scene is economic. Decotora is already a highly expensive pursuit, considering that most owners make modest incomes as truckers. The rocketing price of oil only adds further pressure. “It’s definitely in decline because of fuel prices,” says Snider. “The numbers of decotora are dwindling dramatically. A lot of the time people now leave their trucks in a garage because they simply can’t afford to keep them on the road.”

Despite this decline, the commitment uniting the scene makes it unlikely that decotora will ever face extinction. Anyone who’s prepared to attach salvaged bits of snowplough to their bumper bar is likely to have the resourcefulness to keep their passion alive. “This is much more than just a mode of transport,” Snider says. “Decotora is a complete lifestyle.” The road ahead may be bumpy, but you can bet these highway samurai will be determined to keep on truckin’.

Photographs from Decotora by Tatsuki Masaru (Little More, Japan)