The History of Driving in Japan

Postwar motorisation and the Japanese Grand Prix

1960s

Driving became a sport in Japan only once there was somewhere to do it. Suzuka Circuit was completed in September 1962, and in May 1963 it hosted the first Japanese Grand Prix motor race.

That same July, the Meishin Expressway opened between Ritto and Amagasaki — the first intercity expressway in Japan. Fuji Speedway was completed in December 1965 and opened for business in January 1966; that May it hosted the third Japanese Grand Prix. Tsukuba Circuit followed in 1970. Places built for competition came first, and the map of where you could drive grew outward from them.

Alongside all this, the car turned from a privilege into a household object. The first Toyota Corolla appeared in 1966, and the Datsun Sunny went on sale that April. The everyday car and the purpose-built place to drive arrived at almost the same moment — and that coincidence set the terms for everything that followed.

Touge and winding-road culture: the story and the record

1970s–1990s

In the early 1980s, Japanese cars built around the pleasure of driving arrived one after another: the Toyota Corolla Levin / Sprinter Trueno (AE86) in May 1983, the Honda Ballade Sports CR-X that July, and the Nissan Silvia (S12) that August.

Some of those cars went to the mountains. The National Police Agency's 2005 White Paper on Police describes one category of dangerous group driving as "rolling-zoku, competing in driving technique on mountain roads and the like." Mountain passes were admired in stories — and, at the same time, written into the public record as a target of enforcement.

Restrictions followed. Under Kanagawa Prefecture's ordinance on eliminating bosozoku (in force since 1 April 2004), areas including National Route 1 and the Yumoto–Motohakone prefectural road in Hakone are designated as priority zones where conduct encouraging reckless driving is prohibited. Sections closed to motorcycles specifically number roughly 500 nationwide. Group conduct that seriously endangers traffic falls under Article 68 of the Road Traffic Act: 25 penalty points, revocation of the licence, and a two-year disqualification period.

Touge reached a much wider audience late in this period: Shuichi Shigeno's Initial D began serialisation in Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine in 1995. Fiction made the scenery of the mountain pass common property — but a public road was never, at any point, provided as a place to race.

Grassroots motorsport open to anyone

1960s–today

Places to compete were provided separately. JAF (the Japan Automobile Federation), founded in February 1963, governs motorsport in Japan as the FIA-recognised national sporting authority (ASN). Motorcycle sport is governed separately by MFJ, founded in 1961.

JAF-sanctioned disciplines include gymkhana — one car at a time around a course marked out with pylons on sealed surfaces — dirt trial, its loose-surface counterpart, and rally, contested by a driver and a navigator. Gymkhana and dirt trial are structured as a pyramid: an All-Japan championship at the top, regional championships across eight areas, and club-run local series below that.

The entrance is wider than most people assume. A National B licence asks for a full driving licence, an age of 18 or over, and JAF individual membership; the course costs roughly 5,000-6,000 yen including materials, and the online version takes about 90 minutes. No competition licence at all is needed for Autotest, an event judged on “precision of driving” that you enter in your own car — and taking part in one earns you the right to apply for a National B licence. JAF's statistics record 45,808 four-wheel competition driver permits issued in the 2025 financial year.

Circuits run public programmes too. Fuji Speedway issues a driving licence obtained by attending a briefing, Tsukuba Circuit offers three membership licences depending on the course and vehicle, and Suzuka Circuit publishes a schedule of open track days.

How people enjoy driving now

2000s onward

Today the ways to enjoy driving have separated cleanly. If you want to measure yourself against the clock, there are licences, sanctioned events and circuit sessions waiting for you. Public roads, meanwhile, are for getting somewhere — not for competing. That line took half a century to draw.

So what is left on the public road? The road itself: the rise and fall of it, one corner after another, and the view that opens up beyond. Two trips to the same destination are entirely different days depending on which road you take. For a long time, that knowledge lived only in the heads of people who had driven those roads for years.

GTGO exists to put that part on the map. A GT score derived from elevation change, corners and road width surfaces the roads worth driving, and the roads you have driven are quietly recorded. Not to compete — to take the road in.