Now what on earth is going on here? It’s one of the most amazing –and amusing- sights in Tokyo. Every Sunday afternoon, here at Harajuku, a part of the road is cordoned off with stalls, and thousands upon thousands of teenagers come here in groups to work off their surplus energy. They put their cassette players on the road, turn them up to full volume and jive as hard as they can go for hours on end.

As one writer put it: “They create an impression of rebellion and non-conformity, and their youthful exuberance is a far cry from the dignified restraint of the tea ceremony, and yet to a great extent even these young people are prisoners of their tradition. They organize themselves in feudal-style hierarchies, they follow the instructions of their leaders without question, they put the interests of the group before their own, and when the music stops they return to a world created not by Elvis Presley but by the Shogun Ieasu Tokugawa.”