Japan's driving schools are disappearing one by one as fewer young people seek licenses. At the current pace, one in three schools operating today will have closed by 2050.
Sharp Drop in Young License Holders
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, or Nikkei, said on the 27th that an analysis of National Police Agency data showed the number of license holders aged 24 or under fell by 367,000 between the end of 2021 and the end of 2025, a decline of 6.7% over four years. Among holders of standard Class 1 licenses aged 19 or under, the number dropped by about 88,000 over the same period, a decline of 12.3%.
A shrinking pool of young people is the main driver. The 18-year-old population, estimated by the Recruit Institute of Advanced Educational Research based on Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology data, is projected to fall from about 1.1 million in 2025 to 1.06 million in 2030 and 980,000 in 2035. A growing number of young people, especially in cities with well-developed public transit, also see no need to own a car or obtain a license.
Closures are already happening. Tokyo's Suginami Driving School shut down in August 2023, and Hinomaru Driving School in Meguro Ward has stopped accepting new enrollments ahead of its planned closure in March 2027. Driving schools have also been closing in Chiba, Osaka and Aomori.
About 1.03 million people completed standard license courses at designated driving schools in Japan last year. Factoring in population decline and industry consolidation, Nikkei projected annual graduates would fall below 1 million around 2030 and drop to about 680,000 by 2050.
The number of schools is expected to shrink as well. Designated driving schools, which numbered 1,277 at the end of last year, are estimated to fall 34% to about 840 by 2050 — the equivalent of one in three currently operating schools disappearing.
New Customers: Drivers in Their 70s and Foreign Nationals
Schools fighting to survive are turning from young learners to older adults and foreign nationals.
In Japan, drivers aged 70 and over must take a course for older drivers to renew their licenses. With the population aging rapidly, demand for safety training aimed at older drivers continues even as new license holders decline.
SBS Driving School Anesaki in Ichihara, Chiba Prefecture, is a prime example. Since being absorbed by logistics company SBS Holdings in 2019, it has expanded training for older drivers and now instructs more than 400 of them each month.
Foreign drivers have emerged as another new customer base. As labor shortages in the logistics and transport industries bring in more foreign drivers, the industry expects demand for training tailored to them to grow.
Some schools are overhauling their facilities. When SBS Driving School Anesaki built new lodging two years ago, it allowed trainees to bring in their own food and cook for themselves and installed private showers, taking into account foreign trainees with different religious and cultural practices.
Maebashi Driving School and Kabura Driving School in Gunma Prefecture fill about 40% of their 6,000 to 7,000 annual trainee slots with short-term residential license courses. They recruit students from the Tokyo metropolitan area during spring and summer breaks and take in foreign trainees during the off-season. Reservations and vehicle assignments have moved online, and the schools eliminated paper training records last year.
Rural Areas Pose the Bigger Problem
Not every driving school can pull off such a transformation. Expanding lodging or building foreign-language programs and information technology systems requires substantial investment. Small rural schools with limited financing are the most likely to be pushed out of the competition. Industry consolidation, with large operators acquiring smaller schools alongside closures, is also expected to accelerate.
The blind spot is that the regions losing driving schools may be the ones most dependent on cars. In rural areas with limited public transit, older residents sometimes must keep driving for daily life, meaning driving schools serve a role beyond simply training new license holders.
Nobuyuki Takahashi, a professor at Kokugakuin University, said driving schools are infrastructure that supports traffic safety across entire communities, not just training for older and foreign drivers. He stressed that in areas with limited public transit, rather than uniformly making license renewals harder for older drivers, there is a need to strengthen safety education by making use of driving schools.
