As I was watching Ultraman Taro, a tokusatsu series, the other day, there were a couple of episodes where some children were being bullied by their seniors and something that stood out to me was their clothing. Large heavy jackets that were black in colour with a tinge of blue, a peaked cap and quite a few metal accessories. I explained to those present that this outfit indicated that they were juvenile delinquents and that I’d seen them in a variety of Japanese media. Realising that I’d never talked about it before, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the interesting trope of Banchō and Sukeban.
Let’s begin by looking at what the words “Banchō” and “Sukeban” mean. Banchō, written as 番長 in Japanese, originally referred to a governmental position that involved controlling troops near towns and was repurposed to describe the gangs and leaders of juvenile delinquent males around the mid-20th century. As these gangs refused to admit female members, sukeban, written as スケバン in Japanese, were established which were female juvenile delinquent gangs.
