bamboo shoot tribe outdoor dance culture

The "Takenoko-zoku" (bamboo shoot tribe) refers to a custom or the collective term for its participants, who danced a unique "step dance" outdoors to disco music in flashy costumes. In the early 1980s, in the pedestrian paradise set up next to Yoyogi Park in Harajuku, Tokyo, they danced on the street while surrounding a boombox. The peak of the boom was in 1980 (Showa 55), and by this time, small-scale Takenoko-zoku gatherings were also taking place in parks in cities like Nagoya and in areas such as Kichijoji and Ikebukuro in Tokyo.