ARCHIVING JAPANESE CAR CULTURE THROUGH MAGAZINES: MEET AUTOPREFECTURE
With a growing resurgence surrounding car culture in general, one of the most interesting and always popular sub genres within it is the scene surrounding tuned cars, whether it be for motorsports or just tuner cars built by enthusiasts. In the past, one of the best ways to consume anything related to car culture was through print magazines.
Although websites and Instagram have pretty much taken this role away from print magazines, this is magically not the case in Japan. With giants such as Option magazine that feature mostly tuned cars all the way to more specific magazines that focus on certain models or manufacturers only, the industry, while definitely not as popular as it was at its peak, is definitely still going strong in Japan.
However, there is also quite limited access to it outside of Japan itself, and with travel to Japan seemingly difficult as of right now, we felt the need to introduce some of Japan’s best moments of car culture through the lens of the print magazine through a conversation with Michael from @autoprefecture.jp and @racescans. Based out of Australia, his love towards car culture has been with him from childhood with old Australian car magazines before eventually discovering and collecting Japanese ones. His instagram page is dedicated to archiving the many sub-genres of Japanese car culture and everything motorsport related from all era’s for everyone to see.
To learn more about car culture in Japan, motorsports, and insights into what makes the magazine format so special, we reached out and had a conversation with the man running the page himself.
Thanks a lot for taking the time to hear us out! First and foremost, to those who are unfamiliar, can we get a quick introduction on you and your work?
Hi! My name is Michael, from Brisbane, Australia. I run @autoprefecture.jp Japanese Car magazine archive. A collection of quality magazine scans covering all aspects of Japanese Car culture from 1960 to current day.
What was the catalyst behind starting this archive of magazine scans revolving around car culture?
I've been collecting car magazines since I was a kid, it started with the old Australian Street Machine, Hot 4's and Rotaries magazines my dad had laying around the house everywhere. As I got older I became obsessed with Japanese car culture & tuning. growing up through the late 00's and early 10's car magazines were still the way to see all the latest builds, events & parts etc.
I spent years collecting magazines and in early 2019 after seeing pages like @vhs_refresh, I came up with an idea for my magazine archiving project. Showcasing everything Japanese car related from 1960 to present day. Drift, Drag, Grass roots level racing to Pro classes, Show cars & everything in between all from my personal magazine collection.
Hard copy magazines these days are dying, and with so many old car magazines being left in boxes to rot or just thrown out, these pages will disappear, My goal with Autoprefecture was to create a digital place where everyone can view these pages for free, as they are Japanese Automotive History. I'm proud to say there are now over 5000 quality pages to view on Autoprefecture currently, with 1000's more to come!
Despite having multiple facets of car culture in your page, there seems to be a coherent aesthetic feel to everything. What goes into your mind when curating what scans you post?
Thank you! in all honestly not a lot of thought goes into it other then variety, Majority of magazine pages tend to focus on one culture or subject, (@vhs_refresh showcases that 90's and early 2000's tuning scene that made Japanese tuning cars so popular very well) Autoprefecture focuses on Japanese automotive history & culture as a whole, which is why I believe it has such a different feel & aesthetic compared to other magazine pages.
Most people into car culture would probably know the bigger japanese car magazines, what are some underrated gems you recommend our readers checking out?
For old magazines, you can't go past Auto Works! these are filled with home built machines & real car enthusiasts, and not your latest high dollar Tokyo Auto Salon build. Autoworks has since become G-works magazine which is the modern day equivalent. If you're a motorsport fan, Racing On magazine.
In terms of both the Japanese car scene and the scene globally, what are some of your favorite subcultures within it?
Probably Kaido racers, you'd have to say they are the most obscure section of Japanese car culture, The owners of these cars take a lot of inspiration from the old Silhouette racers of the late 70's & early to mid 80's. Somewhat like V.I.P cars, there are many types of builds that fit under the Kaido Racer banner, however they are all instantly recognisable, small wide wheels, crazy home bodywork, interior tuning, external oil coolers & a lot more, A extremely Japanese way of having fun with your car.
Japan has produced some incredibly recognizable race cars, what are some of your favorites?
The first that comes to mind for me is the iconic Mazda 787B. During the late eighties and early nineties, Japanese manufacturers had great success in motorsport. Honda’s engines dominated Formula 1, the Nissan GT-R R32 destroyed the competition in Group A and Toyota, Mitsubishi and Subaru had great success in rallying. But a race that had eluded Japanese manufacturers was the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This all changed in 1991 when Mazda’s 787B crossed the line in first place, making it the one and only time a rotary powered car has won the event.
The second for me would be the Nissan Silvia S12 “White Lightning” Group 5, Super Silhouette race car belonging to HEROS RACING in 1981-1982, which the race driver Kazuyoshi Hoshino-san was the driver of. Then the car went to Hoshino Racing. Kazuyoshi Hoshino established Hoshino Racing in 1980, which is now Hoshino Impul Co. (known as IMPUL)
What about some underappreciated ones you wish people knew about more?
SYMS Impreza wagon, there was one particular entry for JTCC in 1998 that gathered a fair amount of attention: a Subaru Impreza Wagon. This car would go up against an all Toyota lineup of the time, the car would prove to be incredibly off the pace compared to the rivals, Eventually SYMS pulled the plug on the project, and the Impreza’s career was done, On paper the Impreza seemed to have a real chance against the Toyotas. Equipped with a 2.0, naturally aspirated flat 4 (EJ20) with around 300HP and 230LB-FT of torque, the Impreza was only about 10HP away from the output of the front-running Chasers.
Esso Tom’s JZX100 Chaser which claimed the ’98 JTCC championship, by 1998 the Japanese Touring Car Championship was coming to an end, and in the final season the grid had shrunk to less than nine cars and was an almost all-Toyota affair. While the production version of the Chaser was known for its turbocharged 1JZ-GTE, the touring car version was powered by a naturally aspirated 3S-GE race motor mated to a Hewland 6-speed sequential gearbox. Power was around 310PS. The JTCC Chaser is far from Toyota’s most famous race cars, but it’s easily one of my favorites. It’s got everything that makes ’90s touring cars great with a uniquely Japanese twist. And the fact this platform would go on to become such a favorite of the drift crowd makes it that much better.
I'd also like to mention another very underrated Japanese car magazine page who also covers slightly different content to the rest, and that is @method.works with over 300 pages of high quality scans ready to view.
Other than this, you also started another archiving project called @racescans also on Instagram, can you go a little in-depth on this too?
After running Autoprefecture for almost a year, I decided I wanted to create a second page for the rest of my huge magazine collection, with Autoprefecture being dedicated to Japanese Car culture only, I love Automotive history as a whole and almost anything with an engine interests me, from Formula One to Karting an everything else in between, an so that still left me with 100's of motorsport related magazines that were sitting on my shelves where no one can view them, and so Racescans was born, with the goal to share Motorsport related scans, predominantly from Japanese magazines.
@racescans cover motorsports from around the world but almost exclusively through the lens of Japanese magazines, is there anything in particular you think that stands out in Japanese magazines specifically?
I think it comes back to one of your previous questions in that they just have a certain feel & aesthetic to them. I've collected magazines from all around the world and none can compare to Japanese magazines when it comes to editing, artwork and illustrations.
Finally, what resources do you recommend to those of us interested in motorsport culture but still don’t know where to start?
Motorsport.tv for content from all race series dating years back, i don't think there is a better motorsport video archive around at the moment with over 125+ series ready to view.
Thank you very for your time!
