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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.

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. This style of touge racing was popularized by the TV show, Initial D.

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.

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. Another use of drifting on a touge is to prevent the chaser from his line or to mess up his line. For example if there was a chaser and one were to drift the drifter has now eliminated about 60 percent of the chaser's possible lines forcing him to choose lines that can be predicted. also in doing this one can cause the chaser to slow down in order not to crash into the drifting car in front, which might cause complications due to keeping rpm's high and traction and all other variables to consider in slowing down for a corner.

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 Tou Wen Zi D(頭文字 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.

The racing video game Need For Speed: Pro Street has a drift team that is called Tougeunion team, in the game that is considered to the best of the best in drift type racing. If you win at enough of their events you will get to challenge the drift king to see who is the best in the world in drifting.

• Touge Racing Video Sample
• The Colorful Adventures of TougeKing
• KANSEI - Downhill Specialist

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