Japan Data

In 2018, a record ¥3.8 billion in lost cash was returned to Tokyo police stations.

A total of ¥3.8 billion in lost cash was handed in to Tokyo police during 2018, a 2.4% year-on-year increase and the third-straight record high. During the same year, ¥8.4 billion in cash was reported lost to the city’s police. Dividing one by the other shows that 45.7% of the total reported missing cash was picked up and returned. This statistic runs counter to the common image of Tokyo as a city where people go about their business without much concern for others.

During 2018, ¥2.8 billion in lost cash was returned to the original owners. Around ¥0.5 billion was given to the finder when the original owner could not be located, and around ¥0.6 billion became the revenue of the Tokyo Metropolitan government when the finder declined to receive it.

The number of found items including cash that were handed in to the Metropolitan Police Department rose year-on-year by 4.6% in 2018, to the new record of 4.1 million items. The most common type of items returned were ID documents such as driver’s licenses and health-insurance cards or credit cards, which totaled 752,000 items; followed by around 552,000 items of financial value, such as commuter passes or other smart cards.

For essential personal items like identification cards or cellphones, the number of lost-property reports exceeded the number of items reported handed to police in 2018. Relatively few lost-property reports were submitted for other items, perhaps because the owners had little hope of recovering them. Notably, 343,725 umbrellas were handed in in 2018, but lost-property reports were only filed for 6,154 of them, which is less than 2%. Since plastic umbrellas can be cheaply bought at convenience stores, people are not too concerned about recovering a lost one.

(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo © Jiji.)