pentekappa

The Dekochari or decoration charinko  is a form of art bike indigenous to Japan dating back to the mid 1970s. ‘Deko’ in Japanese is short for decoration and ‘Chari’ is slang for bike. The Dekochari was a response by children to the Dekotora (‘Tora’ is short for Truck) craze which swept Japan after a series of movies called Truck Yaro was released. These movies featured giant trucks decked out in chrome and flashy lights.

Unable to drive the giant chrome-plated flashing trucks they coveted, children instead built plywood boxes around their bikes and attached chrome plating and lights. Almost all current Dekochari’s have elaborate light displays and many include hi-fi audio systems and cup-holders. 

See more Japanese dekochari “cangaroos” here. 

Photos from Satoshi Minakawa.

This entry was posted on May 22, 2009 at 6:31 pm and is filed under Art, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.