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Why are l and r not separate contrasting sounds in Japanese?

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Diagram of a human head in profile showing the location of vocal organs and possible places of articulation for speech sounds, with labels for lips, teeth, tongue, palate, uvula, pharynx, and vocal cords, and numbered regions corresponding to types of articulation such as bilabial, alveolar, and velar.
pronunciation Diagram depicting the location of human vocal organs and possible places of articulation used for speech.

In the Japanese language, the sounds represented by the English letters "l" and "r" are not separate, contrasting phonemes because they both fall under a single phoneme, categorized as /r/.1

In Japanese phonology, this /r/ phoneme is typically realized as an alveolar tapā€”a sound produced by a quick flick of the tongue against the alveolar ridge. Because the language does not distinguish between the lateral liquid "l" and the rhotic "r" as distinct phonemic units, native speakers perceive these variations as the same sound. This is why, when Japanese speakers incorporate foreign loanwords, the /r/ phoneme is used to represent both "l" and "r" sounds from the source language.1