A rickshaw is a two- or three-wheeled cart, originally pulled by a single person on foot and carrying one passenger, first built in Japan around 1869 after a longstanding ban on wheeled vehicles was lifted; its name comes from the Japanese jinrikisha, meaning human-powered vehicle. The hand-pulled original spread across Asia and gradually gave way to pedal-powered cycle rickshaws, or pedicabs, and later to motorized auto rickshaws and electric variants, so the word rickshaw now covers this whole family of small passenger vehicles rather than the pulled cart alone. Bangladesh holds the greatest concentration of the type still in daily service, with an estimated 40,000 rickshaws operating in Dhaka alone, while in Japan hand-pulled rickshaws survive mainly as a heritage and tourist attraction in traditional geisha districts. Across much of Asia and increasingly beyond it, rickshaws in their various forms remain a low-cost, low-emission form of short-distance urban transport.
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