Japan has its share of teenage punks, but compared with their scarier counterparts in the United States, they are rather tame. Instead of spraying enemies and strangers with automatic weapons, they settle their disputes with methods usually far less lethal, from fists to head butts.

Japanese pop-culture portrayals of punks, from manga to trading cards, may stress their coolness, but there is also often a leavening of humor that undercuts the ultra macho image these guys are trying to project.

One example is the Hiroshi Takahashi comic "Crows," which ran for eight years from 1981 in Shonen Champion magazine and has sold 42 million copies in paperback editions. The Takashi Miike film "Crows Zero," based on the manga, grossed ¥2.5 billion in 2007, becoming the prolific Miike's biggest-ever hit.