Bicycle riders in Japan had achieved “invisible,” or ubiquitous, status by the 1920s. In 1927, the government declared November 11 to be “Bicycle Commemoration Day,” noting that Japan had become “the foremost bicycle riding country in the world.” By 1940, there were some eight million bicycles in use. But the war years exacted a heavy toll. After Japan’s defeat in 1945, some three million bicycles had been lost and the remaining vehicles were in poor shape. As in other areas of the Japanese economy and society, Japan’s postwar bicycle recovery was rapid and sustained. Miyata, Dai Nippon Jitensha, Okamoto Jitensha, and other pre-war bicycle giants were joined by an explosion of small bicycle workshops and factories eager to produce bicycles for peacetime Japan, but it was not until the end of the Occupation in 1952 that production exceeded one million. In 1955, a government white paper declared an end, economically at least, to the postwar period. One year later, in 1956, bicycle production finally topped the 1940 figure by 1.3 million. Increased production allowed more people to realize the dream of bicycle ownership. By 1950, the bicycle census stood at ten million, jumping to 14 million in 1955, nearly double the prewar peak of eight million. By 1958, the figure stood at 17 million, overwhelming the bicycle tax and registration system that had begun in the 1890s. Bicycle use continued to rise, despite rapid motorization. Currently the bicycle census stands at just under 90 million (out of a population of 125 million). This paper will examine the rebirth of the Japanese bicycle industry in the immediate postwar period and seek to explain why the bicycle has remained the “speedy feet of the nation” to the present day. The paper will focus on the role played by promotional subsidies that were derived from profits from legalized betting at bicycle races called keirin, a track cycling event that originated in Japan in 1948. Between 1949 and 1978, the bicycle industry received subsidies amounting to a total of 38,000 million yen, primarily for research and development to improve production techniques and the promotion of bicycle exports. Indispensible to the development of the bicycle industry and the cultural popularity of bicycling, there has been little academic study, in Japanese or in English, on the history of keirin and its connection with the postwar recovery of Japan, as one of the world’s foremost bicycle countries.