Yankee style in Japan,, not in the ballpark

How a kind of street gang turned out to the street smart

Masahiro (Hiro) Nakagawa
3 min readNov 2, 2020

Coaching from Sub Zero — fighting against COVID-19 with Zoom / Autumn-Winter 2020–2021 / Week 5

Credit; Hiro Nakagawa @ Roppongi Hills Club

This week, I had 31st guests from Kyoto as my student guests. Please allow me to explore a short story of them; Shota and Sho.

In Japan, we have a common word called “YANKEE” style. This is the same meaning of the original meaning of Yankees, like active kids in the Bronx formed New York Yankees and fought against Brooklyn’s dodgers in the early 20th century. But Japan’s Yankee (a little different intonation as high tone at the end) has a different lifestyle, like young street gangs,, but not so illegally active, but just gathering among the same group. Casual gang-style? Slacker? But not so stupid to be illegal, but just pretending like a gang. They are so sensitive to the real world and try to worm their own kingdom.

In my class, I have one seat to welcome this kind of Yankee; In current senior grade, Shota is the one. His father owns a small civil-engineering company and Shota is to inherit that company. But as a classic Yankee, he trained Karate and other martial arts to protect himself, and rarely sit down at a desk to work hard in the…

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