Touge

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Touge (峠, tōge^?) is a Japanese word literally meaning "pass." It refers to a mountain pass or any of the narrow, winding roads that can be found in and around the mountains of Japan and other geographically similar areas.

Placing a series of turns or bends in the steep roads that provide access to and from the high elevations of the mountains was intended to be a safety measure, usually to prevent commuters from reaching unstable speeds or creating excessive wear on the vehicles associated with them. It is therefore ironic that these same passes have become popular with street racers and motorsport enthusiasts in the last two decades, providing a dangerous and therefore challenging course where nightly competitions are not unheard of.

1 Racing
2 Misconceptions
3 Touge in media
4 External links

[edit] Racing

For touge racing team battling, a race has two stages — an uphill and a downhill battle. One car leads the race during the uphill stage, with the second car leading the downhill. Because most touge races feature narrow tracks, overtaking is extremely difficult and is sometimes impossible.

The lead car wins if the space between the cars increases considerably, while the following car wins if the gap between them stays the same, decreases from start to finish or the following car overtakes the lead car. If any car spins out or crashes, the other one wins the race.

Touge races start illegally when one car attempts to overtake another and the car in front will not let the car behind pass and speeds up. Also, in night races, the car behind will flash its headlights and the lead car will then speed up to begin the race.

[edit] Misconceptions

Stemming from this surge in popularity, the term has been pirated and misused by overzealous enthusiasts (often incorrectly as a verb) to erroneously describe almost any event involving street racing, even when there are no mountain passes involved.

Another common mistake is the association of drifting with touge, implying at times that the words share a common definition. While drift is considered a style or form of driving, touge does not necessarily have any binding relationship to motorsports. In most occasions, a touge driver only drifts his car to shake off excessive entry speeds. This is because extended drifting will not only cause excessive wear on tyres but can also cause the car to exit a corner much slower than not drifting.

[edit] Touge in media

Touge racing's notoriety outside of Japan can be attributed partially to entertainment media such as Initial D (originally manga, and later anime, and in 2005, live action under the Chinese title Tau Man Ji D [1]) and, to a lesser extent, the recent American film The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

The racing video game Need For Speed Carbon has the "Canyon Duel" which is for all intents and purposes a touge race, except that both stages are done downhill, and a system of "points" is used for clarification.

Touge racing is also popularized in many DVD magazines in Japan and America, now that "drifting" has become accepted by the mainstream, though there may or may not be drifting involved.