Crossing From The Castle

 So what does Nijo Castle have to do with Japanese road etiquette, specifically between drivers and cyclists?

About the castle: Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, ordered its construction in 1601. Conceived as a testament to his, and his clan’s power, it served as a stage to many key events in Japanese history, including the transfer of power from the shogunate back to the emperor in 1867, and as an incubator for the codes of honor that governed, not only the samurai, but also Japanese society.

I wasn’t thinking about any of that—indeed, I knew, and still know little about any of it—as I rode my rental bike from the hotel to the castle. But I was still marveling at how drivers making the turn around Omiya Station stopped—and didn’t honk their horns or stare aggressively—as I, two other cyclists and three pedestrians crossed. 

Granted, I have seen such deference in France and other European countries. I have attributed it to the fact (or, at least, my theory) that many of those motorists are also cyclists, or at least have ridden in their recent pasts. The same is probably true for at least some Kyoto drivers:  Indeed, I saw people riding utilitarian bikes like the one I rented who were parking their cars—sometimes BMWs or other luxury or near-luxury vehicles—the day before. I suspect that they use their bikes for errands and other short trips and perhaps take rides with their kids in nearby parks. But the kind of courtesy I experienced there, and even in Tokyo, felt older and thus more ingrained than one conditioned by modes of transportation.

When I left the Castle and found my rental bike exactly where I left it—next to a shop across the street from the Castle’s main entrance—the proverbial light bulb went off in my head. And it grew brighter when I crossed the intersection—again, with drivers stopping to let me go by—it grew brighter.

I don’t know a thing about Kyoto statutes or Japanese laws, but I suspect they include the same prohibitions against stealing from and endangering other people. Such regulations, however, don’t stop people from theft, assault or murder in the United States. Now, some have said that it’s because the US is so diverse and Japan is so orderly because it’s 98 percent Japanese. Frankly, I find that explanation offensive because it’s essentially racist.

In learning about the arrangement of rooms within the Ninomaru Palace and the ceremonies and rituals involved in everything from negotiations between the shoguns and emperors to meals, I realized that there was an even greater degree of shame in violating those rules and morés than in transgressing the unwritten rules, or breaking the laws, of most other societies. It seems that the samurai codes of honor—and the fear of violating them—has become part of the DNA of people whose great-grandparents weren’t born when the last samauri died.

One thing I have learned—and that James Baldwin and others have expressed in ways I never could—is that every person, and every group of people, who has a language and culture that is their own has paid a price for it. (As Caliban tells Prospero in The Tempest: “You have given me language/ And the profit on’t is, I can curse.”) The shoguns were military rulers which means, of course, that their codes had the threat of violence behind them.  So, I believe, it’s fair to ask whether the fact that I could ride without the fear of being victimized by a driver’s “road rage” or that I could leave a bike secured by nothing more than the “Chinese” lock is hereditary, learned or a result of intergenerational trauma. (Nobody is better at inflicting trauma than any military.)

Whatever the answer, I’ll say that I enjoyed the peace of mind I felt while cycling in Japan, even on its busiest roads.