Touring car competition in Japan traced its roots to the late 1960s, where early series were dominated by the Nissan Skyline GT-R C10. The Mazda Savanna RX-3 ended that run of dominance, before Group 5 machinery entered the picture in the latter half of the 1970s. The series was absorbed into the Super Silhouette class in 1979, which ran as a support category to the Fuji Grand Champion Series, and was eventually dissolved in 1984 by the All Japan Sports Prototype Championship.
The championship was revived in 1985 specifically for Group A competition, organised across three displacement-based divisions. By the late 1980s the top division featured Toyota Supras, Nissan Skylines, and the European Ford Sierra RS500, while Division 2 centred on BMW M3 competition, and the smallest class was contested between Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas.
The season's showpiece event was the InterTEC 500 km held at Fuji Speedway each November, which attracted leading drivers and teams from Europe and Australia. Tom Walkinshaw, Peter Brock, Allan Moffat, Allan Grice, and Klaus Niedzwiedz were among the international competitors who regularly made the trip. In 1987, InterTEC was incorporated into the World Touring Car Championship calendar, underscoring the event's international standing.
By 1993 the Group A championship had narrowed into a near-monoculture, with the Nissan Skyline GT-R maintaining a four-year undefeated streak in the top division. This domination, replicated in other Group A championships around the world, contributed to the decision to switch formats. Fatal accidents during this era included the death of Akira Hagiwara, who was killed in a 1986 testing session at Sportsland SUGO after his car struck a barrier and caught fire.
For 1994 the series adopted FIA Supertouring regulations, following the trend of leading national championships in Europe and Australia. The Japanese manufacturers initially entered the Nissan Primera, Honda Civic Ferio and Accord, and Toyota Corona alongside the Toyota Corolla E110. The final round of the inaugural Supertouring season was also part of the 1994 Asia-Pacific Touring Car Championship.
The only all-foreign championship victory in the Supertouring era came in 1995, when Steve Soper drove a Team Schnitzer BMW 318i to the title. By 1997 the escalating complexity and cost of the Supertouring formula, a problem affecting the ruleset internationally, prompted the series to modify its regulations, widening permitted body dimensions and increasing exhaust noise limits to improve spectator appeal. Toyota's larger Chaser model was among the cars that benefited from the widened body allowance.
The 1998 season proved to be the final chapter for the JTCC. Nissan withdrew due to financial difficulties, and Honda departed to concentrate resources on its Formula One engine supply programme through Mugen Motorsports. The company also judged it more economical to race its NSX in the Japanese Grand Touring Championship. Toyota continued alone with Corona EXIV and Chaser entries, occasionally opposed by a pair of independently operated Subaru Impreza wagons. Both Nissan and Honda subsequently participated in the British Touring Car Championship through their European branches. In 1999 a proposed new Super Silhouette Car Championship using spaceframe cars failed to materialise, and the series was abandoned as Japan's major manufacturers had by then committed their works programmes to the JGTC, the series later known as Super GT.
A relaunched JTCC was announced for 2012 using Super 2000 regulations, with a calendar combining five Japanese rounds with one event in China in collaboration with the Chinese Touring Car Championship. The project was indefinitely delayed following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and did not proceed. Touring car racing returned to Japan in 2019 in the form of the TCR Japan Touring Car Series, operating under TCR regulations as a support category to Super Formula. The TCR Japan series suffered from chronically low entry numbers throughout its existence and was discontinued at the end of the 2024 season.
The JTC/JTCC served as Japan's principal touring car platform for over a decade and created one of the era's most significant domestic racing arenas for Group A machinery. The InterTEC at Fuji Speedway functioned as an unofficial world touring car invitational, attracting the sport's leading figures from multiple continents. The Supertouring era gave Toyota, Nissan, and Honda a common national platform for factory-supported competition, and the championship's eventual collapse mirrored the broader decline of the Supertouring formula worldwide as costs outpaced competitive returns.