Book Review: War on Wheels, by Justin McCurry

Title: War on Wheels – Inside Keirin and Japan’s Cycling Subculture
Author: Justin McCurry
Publisher: Pursuit (UK) | Simon and Schuster (US)
Pages: 264
Year: 2021
Order: Profile Books (UK) | Simon and Schuster (US)
What it is: A brief history of keirin racing and its place in Japanese culture
Strengths: It’s an introduction to keirin racing and its place in Japanese culture
Weaknesses: It’s a book largely about bureaucracy with very little human warmth, no stars of Japanese keirin past or present to really give a damn about.

Gambling is illegal in Japan, except where it isn’t. One of the areas in which gambling is not illegal is bike racing. Specifically, keirin racing.

Most of us are pretty confident in our knowledge of what keirin racing is. A derny-mounted pacer takes a line of riders up to speed and, after having done 1,400 metres or so, pulls off the track and the riders go at it hell for leather for the next 600 metres.

That’s the international flavour of the race. The Japanese version – from which the international flavour is adapted – is the same, except where it’s different. And it’s different in most respects. Justin McCurry’s War on Wheels – Inside Keirin and Japan’s Cycling Subculture offers the reader the skinny on original flavour Japanese keirin.

Originally planned for publication in 2020, to tie in with the Tokyo Olympics, War on Wheels was held back a year when the Games got postponed and was released last year ahead of the 2021 Games. It has sat on my bookshelf since then partly because I took a timeout from cycling books over the course of the lurgi. But it has also sat there because of its publisher’s last Olympic tie-in, Kenny Pryde’s The Medal Factory, a book which annoyed the hell out of me. Evidently I was not alone in being annoyed by that book as it has still not appeared in paperback more than two years after its hardback publication, having generated for its publisher the threat of a lawsuit which then required the excision of…