Keep to the Left!
Growing up in America, I often heard (and laughed at) the prevailing joke about the difference between the U.S. and the U.K. regarding which side of the road to drive on. There are several versions, but it basically goes like this: “Americans drive on the right side of the road”, implying that the left side is the wrong side. Oh yeah, it’s always good to have a laugh at the expense of our British bretheren; one of the few occasions when we actually consider them at all.
England does have its reasons for sticking to the left, all stemming from the first legal order to do so in 1756 in reference to traffic problems that arose while crossing London Bridge. What about Japan, though? Where does its history of left-hand-side travel have its origins? Well, if you think this was supposed to be a long, detailed post about it, you’re mistaken. Why? Because the explanation is simple; During the Edo period, passage to the left was required to keep samurai from crashing swords when passing each other. Every Japanese person I’ve ever met says this is common knowledge.
One can only imagine the sudden battles that erupted before this informal rule was adopted. You can picture two slightly inebriated off-duty warriors passing each other on the right. Their swords clash, a few choice words are exchanged, and in a flash, blades fly and blood is spilled. Cool stuff, right? Well, such was not the prevailing opinion of the time and a small bit of order was created from necessity. Or, at least this is how I imagine it. Probably, there are other factors involved, but none as exciting as spur-of-the-moment swordfights.
These days, when walking around Tokyo, you can see that the majority (if only a slight one) of people try to keep to the left. Are they keeping with tradition? Is it common knowledge that this is the appropriate way to move about in public spaces? I’d like to think so. If so, then why do so many people forsake conventional wisdom when it comes to this? I mean, so many people just go in whatever direction they see fit. They enter busy trafficways from doorways without any regard to who they are stepping in front of. They walk perpendicular to traffic flow at major crossings like Hachiko in Shibuya. And, most annoyingly, they zig-zag back and forth across walkways while text-messaging on their mobile phones or while window shopping.
It’s clear that Tokyo society has de-evolved since the end of the Edo period, and the absence of samurai and the danger of having a limb lopped off for failure to adhere to proper social etiquette has created a society of people who have lost respect for the “rules of the road” (and sidewalks). Isn’t it time that the samurai class was re-established and the penalty for carelessly knocking into someone while ignoring conventional foot-traffic rules was a good slashing? I, for one, think yes, it is.
Okay, maybe not that drastic, but…
Here’s to the hope that the sons of Edo will return to their rightful place and re-establish order in a society that has spun out of control. Here’s to Bushido.
This post was submitted by billywest
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Keep to the Left! …
Have you ever wondered about some of the basic traffic rules in Japan, like sticking to the left? No? Well, read this article anyway….
I was warned before I came that there are different conventions for pedestrians in different cities. Certainly here in Nagoya it’s confusing, the official signs in the train stations say keep right but almost everyone keeps left until they see someone coming toward them and then they do the embarrassment shuffle
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This is GREAT!! “sudden samurai duel!” i like that. I bet it was just as awesome as you make it sound!
Moreover, sometimes out of irritation, due to the zigzaggin everywhe you mentioned, I wish I did have a sword to clash with
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People in Sendai seem to be confused about this tradition, and people in Osaka ignore it all together.
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ARRRRRGH.
Riding my bike today along the path a fellow biker was coming towards me so I veered off all the way to the left giving her a wide birth to my right. She kept on going straight into me. (She was downhill, I was uphill.) Now, I’m looking right into her eyes like giving her the, “This is Japan ride on the left side, move over before I hit you-you hit me” face, but she did nothing. Not until the last moment, after I had squeezed my breaks–loosing all my momentum for the uphill–did she un-daze her self swerve off to her left (my right) and avoid a crash. At least she gave me a surprised sounding “sumimasen, gomennasai” She was also quite cute, so that made up for it a bit. I still can’t tell if she was just dazed, she assumed I would move to the right and this was a game of chicken, or that she really wanted to be on that side of the road. Either way none of this matters. In America also people also can’t figure out the move to the right. For me this is common sense. Sigh.
Found ya via japansoc. Cool site!
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I like that most people (not all but most) stand to one side on the escalator. In the US most people completely block the escalator so you can’t pass.
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Apparently, this is bad for the escalator mechanism and causes it to break down sooner. I’ve seen signs at escalators and on TV programs calling for people to stand in the middle if alone, and side by side if in pairs. Certainly, people flying down the escalators two or three steps at a time can’t be good for the mechanism.
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They should make stronger escalators. I would think they would be very strong already, at least in the US where they often have to support people weighing in excess of 350 pounds.
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So why doesn’t the rule apply in Kansai then? I never knew the reason behind it all, but more than Japan using the left side I always thought of it as Kanto is left and Kansai is right.
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@Tornadoes:
It doesn’t matter how strong they make them; if one side experiences more wear and tear than the other (even just by a small fraction), the imbalance will cause the machine to fail to work properly over time. But, I sense that you knew this and were just being facetious
@Darg:
Probably a combination of factors. Maybe it’s as simple as Kansai people not wanting to do things the way Kanto people do (lots of evidence of this kind of thinking already, right?). Or, it could be that informal rules adopted during the Edo period were likely more influenced by happenings in Edo than in west Japan, so maybe this pedestrian rule never caught on there. Left or right, however, is not the problem… People who cut diagonally across busy walkways, bump into a lot of people without regard for anyone but themselves, and then cut in front of others to board a train or exit through a turnstile deserve to be dealt some samurai justice.
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I find bike/pedestrian/car situation very frightening here, which is odd considering I’m accustomed to fighting taxis and buses on a road bike in downtown San Francisco. Aside from the whole “stay to your left…except when you don’t….and follow the arrows on the stairs….except when you don’t” deal, the wobbling bike-grannies are constantly running me down.
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Interesting! Tho, being English I tend to feel that left _is_ right
It’s interesting to compare experiences I have read about here to those in other big cities. For instance, in London there doesn’t seem to be any convention at all, with people milling about and wandering everywhere. It’s like playing dodgeball with people sometimes.
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You know, Kurlach, there’s a pretty well-known study that showed countries using the left-side rule were likely to have fewer traffic accidents. This study included more than just statistics, so it was pretty interesting; it got into most people being right-eye dominant and all that.
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Forgive any mistake I make (I don´t speak english very well). I heard an academic from history area telling that driving on the left was very common in the middle age europe because the horsemen used swords on the right side and liked to cross with that side toward the others who were passing by.
About the pedestrians behavior, I think that if you drive on the right or on the left when you use your car, you tend to do it in the same way when you are walking.
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This is very interesting. After being here for so long, never thought about it and I would have never known. That is cool but I bet the duels weren’t pretty.
Someone mentioned about being confused in Nagoya…it’s the same in Tokyo or Yokohama too. Often thinking left is the side to be on, I’ll get to a stair case with arrows pointing up on the right side. What gives.
While on the subject…there should be a law for moped riders that goes like this; “Ride/drive on the left. Stay on the left…oh, and behind me. Or else suffer the consequences.” No offense to any moped riders that may be reading this.
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Yeah bring em back. I’ll act as a vagrant always ready to fight a samurai.
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[...] fun article by a fellow Japan blogger on the history behind why you have to remember to Keep to the Left! in [...]
Billy….good post. I didn’t know that the walking on the left stemmed-from samurai not wanting to clash swords while walking. However, I guess there weren’t many left-handed (like me) samurai back then?
I am totally with you that there needs to be samurai around to put etiquette and order back into walking in this crazy city (Tokyo). I often say I would VOLUNTEER my time to do this in Shinjuku (where I live and walk every day). Getting bumped by people walking two and three abreast while I am walking alone all the way to the left is the MAIN reason why I am leaving Japan next year, well, either that or the constant stream of cigarette smoke one is forced to inhale, or I could go on.
Will miss my fiber Internet connection and washlet though. And courteous (if robotic) convenience store employees.
Also, good point about escalators, it makes sense, although I do like how Japanese stand all the way to the left because I never allow a machine to do all the work for me so I always walk both up and down escalators.
Yeah, good post, best one I’ve read on anyone’s Japan site in a long time. Informative and true. The only suggestion I would make would be putting up a few photos of people walking/not walking on the left side.
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Thank you, Jason.
Can’t put the pictures up though. I see that deplorable behavior enough in real life; it would kill me to have to witness it on my own website
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Interesting story, but I have never heard the samurai story before.
The version that I have heard is that during the Meiji era, Japan hired British consultants to help build the railway network. The British designers followed the British convention of having the trains run on the left hand side of the track, and when auto traffic took off a few decades later the Japanese carried the convention over to the roads.
Also, driving on the left makes a lot of sense … the 90% of people who are right handed keep their dominant right hand on the steering wheel while they are changing gear.
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From the post:
“What about Japan, though? Where does its history of left-hand-side travel have its origins?”
It was supposedly common practice to keep to the left during the Edo period, whether on foot, in a rickshaw, whatever…
You’re definitely right about the adoption of the British railway traffic convention. Unfortunately, some of the facetious nature of the article was missed by most readers, I think. My poor writing skills are to blame
Some facetiousness (is that a word?) here:
“Every Japanese person I’ve ever met says this is common knowledge.”
While it’s true that left-hand-side road travel was common practice in parts of Japan during the Edo period, I don’t think anyone (except some proud Japanese people) believes that the road-traffic rules of Japan’s highways and byways were developed from that practice
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