What side of the road do you drive on? Tell me your country and I can probably guess. A good rule of thumb is that former British colonies drive on the left, while everyone else drives on the right. This doesn’t always hold (for example, the US and Canada—both former British colonies—drive on the right) but it does hold true often enough to make it a good guess if you otherwise don’t know.
But then we come to Japan. Japan drives on the left, yet Japan was never a British colony. What gives?
I actually wouldn’t think this much of note, but I get asked the why of this often enough by non-Japanese for it to stick in my brain as something people are curious about. Just last week I met a guy from Mexico who found it very frustrating that they drive on the left here and he repeatedly asked me why.
I thought it might be fun today to share the popular reason for this. Let’s note that this is only the popular story among the Japanese, but scholars debate if it is actually true or not because historical records don’t provide a lot of evidence for why they drive on the left side, nothing conclusive. But like I said, it’s a fun and popular story, and it does seem plausible enough for us to accept in light of a lack of other evidence.
The story goes that they drive on the left side in Japan because of the samurai. You see, the samurai wore their swords on the left side so that it was easier to draw the sword with their right hand. According to the tale, samurai would walk on the left side of the road so that their swords would never accidentally bump into each other, which would be something of a faux pas.
The automobile didn’t come until many years after the samurai class had been abolished, but the habit of walking on the left had been well established so that when cars did come it just seemed natural to drive on the same side they walked.
So there you go: it’s all because of the samurai!
Of course there are other theories; other more boring theories. One of these says it was simply because of British influence. America forcefully opened Japan to the world in 1853, but America soon fell into bloody civil war and lost her influence in Japan for many years, so Britain stepped in and became one of the strongest influences as Japan worked to rapidly modernize. It is thought that Japan took much engineering influence from Britain, including for the tram and street system, and these led to driving on the left side.
Or you know, maybe it was a combination of both. Who knows. Like I said, scholars seem unsure and they still debate this point. At any rate, the samurai sword story is a very popular one in Japan, so I think it’s worth knowing about even if it’s not entirely accurate.