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The story
On BS Fuji’s Naoko Iijima talk show, Fujii Fumiya was asked about rumors that he used to be a “Kurume delinquent” (yankii), and his answer — “Back in our day, everyone had a pompadour,” “well, it was more New Wave, really” — became a hot topic. The thread spiraled from Checkers’ hairstyles and the bontan-trouser craze into a full-blown discussion of early-80s fashion and music history, including the old rivalry between Eikichi Yazawa’s band Carol and Kiyoshiro Imawano.
8/28 (Fri) 1:39 PM
Singer Fumiya Fujii (64) appeared on the BS Fuji program “Naoko Iijima’s Shall We Have a Drink Tonight?”, which aired on the 27th. He was asked about rumors that he was a former delinquent, and responded.
That day, Fujii chatted over drinks with actress Naoko Iijima (58) at an izakaya in Yoga, Tokyo, covering a wide range of topics. When the conversation turned to his younger days, Iijima asked him whether the persistent rumor that he’d been a “delinquent from Kurume, Fukuoka” was actually true.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
I had short hair myself, but literally every guy in my class had that cut lol
A childhood friend of mine was taking the entrance exam at the same school as me — I told him "at least look presentable for one day" — but he showed up with his Checkers hair still intact and wearing bontan trousers… and failed. Maybe that's why.
I didn't even know what to say to him.
That candy's actually pretty tasty though (a nod to "Bontan Ame," the citrus candy that shares the name)
He sings such kiddy songs I figured he was way younger.
So that means he was already an adult when he sang "Giza Giza Heart no Komoriuta"?
Singing a song like that at his age must've been embarrassing.
What do you think of actors who keep playing students (high schoolers and the like) well past that age?
The music he was doing before his debut was totally different
https://youtu.be/RkVyRlvE-8g
Back in their amateur days they were basically a party band close to Shanels (the group later known as Rats & Star)
Going in that direction, they'd have just ended up as a watered-down Shanels
The record label's strategy call was the right one
When you type "bouro" into your IME, doesn't the real word ("bakuro" — "exposé") pop up right next to it in the predictions?
There was a soccer club with that name, right?
I had zero interest so I never bothered to find out, though.
If we're talking Kurume, Seiko Matsuda is one year above Fumiya, right?
There was a Fukuoka local TV show with Cunning Takeyama that covered this — they even handed out maps of the area around each member's family home. Local news back then actually reported on the Fujii brothers' parents inviting fan "pilgrims" into their house, showing off childhood photo albums and serving them tea and sweets.
That never bothered me personally.
What was rough was when an enka song charted with several different singers covering it at once.
Like "Hisame," lol
And what changed all that was the pompadours of Eikichi Yazawa's band Carol, wasn't it?
And the guy who mocked Eikichi Yazawa's pompadour look at Carol's peak was Kiyoshiro Imawano
Personally I was more into Loudness and 44 Magnum than Checkers
(-。-)y-~ (a smug little smoking emoticon)
Imawano was more into makeup himself, after all
I think Kiyoshiro's real gripe was that Carol was ripping off the Beatles — he couldn't stand it.
RC Succession's sound at the time leaned more toward the Stones anyway
The Mitsuru Hanagata hairdo (a character from the classic anime Star of the Giants)
Wasn't it freight trains, not the Blue Train?
He did his apprenticeship at Tosu Station, then moved to Haiki Station in Sasebo.
Oh, so it was just connections (nepotism), huh
Wasn't RC Succession still a three-piece folk act during Carol's peak?
That's right.
Back when RC opened for Carol — right around when RC put out their "Single Man" album — Ei-chan (Yazawa) was riding his motorcycle without a helmet, pompadour and all, right past the National Diet Building on his way to the concert venue. That was the era.
Maybe these days it's tattoos serving that same "don't mess with me" purpose
Did nobody try to stop that? lol
Yeah, they'd just make them for you, no questions asked. Though I went to a shop an upperclassman introduced me to, so maybe I got special treatment.
The shop owner: "Now don't wear this to school, okay? Absolutely do not wear this to school."
Background and Key Points
Fumiya Fujii debuted in 1983 as a member of Checkers, the pompadour-and-blazer idol band whose look — hair swept back at the sides, one long fringe hanging over the forehead — became a mass teen trend across Japan almost overnight. He grew up in Kurume, a city in Fukuoka Prefecture that, alongside neighboring Kitakyushu, has long had a reputation in Japanese pop culture as a stronghold of “yankii” (delinquent-adjacent) fashion: bleached or permed hair, exaggeratedly baggy “bontan” trousers, and modified school uniforms (nagaran/tanran) worn as a status marker rather than a sign of actual criminality. That regional image is why the “former delinquent” rumor has followed Fujii for decades, and why Naoko Iijima’s question landed as a loaded one rather than idle small talk.
The thread didn’t really argue about whether Fujii was a delinquent — nobody treated that as settled either way — it split instead over what his hairstyle actually was: era-appropriate mainstream conformity (as posters said, “everyone” had that cut), a New Wave/Mod-adjacent look distinct from true yankii style, or a diluted version of the Shanels (Rats & Star) party-band aesthetic Checkers’ label steered them away from at debut. A side argument broke out over whether “riizento” strictly means the side-swept hair rather than the pompadour puff itself.
What’s easy to miss is the throwaway explanation in post 110: dressing moderately tough wasn’t rebellion for its own sake but a defensive tactic against being bullied by straight-laced peers or targeted by actual delinquents — a social logic largely invisible outside Japan’s school-uniform culture.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “Fujii Fumiya Asked About “Former Delinquent” Rumors, Responds: “Back in Our Day, Everyone Had a Pompadour,” “Well, It Was More New Wave”.”
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