Japanese is considered a language that prefers to focus on situations rather than persons. Such event portrayal can affect L1 Japanese speakers’ acquisition of English, a language thought to focus more on agents. Passives are a way of backgrounding agents, and L1 expression of agency could be reflected in their L2 use. Similar interference during L2 acquisition has been observed when examining argument structure and passivisation across various languages. This corpus-based study examines written and spoken texts produced by L1 Japanese college students. It compares these to native English speakers’ language and examines indications of L1 interference in passive construction use. It finds differences suggesting that structures are carried over into the learnt language, such as the adversative passive, a feature absent in English, and relative clauses that give prominence to actions rather than actors. Indications of a different perspective during event portrayal were also found. Furthermore, the study suggests that the various functions of the passive in Japanese can contribute to a wider range of EFL learners’ use of some passive verbs, such as the potentially causative ‘made’. ‘Make’ causatives may be an area for further research on the perception of argument structure and agency during language acquisition.