For any tourist who loses a wallet in Wakkanai, sunglasses in Sapporo, or even pop concert tickets in Tokyo, the chances are that a well-meaning local resident will find them and hand them over to a nearby police station.
Fairly put, the Japanese are the best in the world at returning lost property.
Last year, Tokyo residents returned a record 4.49 billion yen (US$30 million) in lost cash to authorities. As well as cash, everything found from umbrellas to passports and credit cards was dutifully handed in to authorities.
Makoto Watanabe, a professor of communications and media at Hokkaido Bunkyo University in Eniwa, Hokkaido, said for the vast majority of Japanese, not handing in lost property would be “unthinkable”.
“Generally speaking, when a Japanese person finds something that does not belong to them, they put themselves in the shoes of the person who has lost that money or item,” he told media.
“We tend to imagine how inconvenient or terrible it would be if we lost a large amount of money, a wallet with credit cards or a driving licence or other important documents in it,” he said. “For most people – and I accept that is not absolutely everyone in Japan, but for most people, they want to help out.”
In total last year, 4.4 million items were handed in to Tokyo police.
By law, anyone who finds lost money in Japan is required to turn it over to the police but can claim a reward of between 5% and 20% if it is claimed by the owner. If the cash has not been collected after three months, the total sum goes to the finder.