Japan to create online database for lost items

The Metropolitan Police Department s center for lost items in Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward in April 2019 Asahi Shimbun File photo The National Police Agency plans to create an online database of items found and handed in by citizens to search for lost belongings.

The agency said on Nov. 10 that it is working on a comprehensive system that will display all items brought to police stations across Japan.

The plan calls for integrating the networks into a single system over the course of five years from this fiscal year, despite the fact that the information is currently managed separately by prefectural police authorities.

As a first step, the new mechanism will be started in 10 prefectures - Niigata, Kyoto, Nagasaki, Aomori, Nagano, Fukui, Nara, Tottori, Okayama and Oita at the end of the fiscal year.

It will require a revision of the rules governing the National Public Safety Commission. The NPA asked the public to give their views on the new system for a one month period from Nov. 11.

The police officials who take receipt of items handed in by the public will be able to register them on the nationwide database at police stations and koban boxes. People who want to retrieve lost objects will be able to peruse the NPA's specialized website for the types and locations of articles handed in.

The current framework only lists the data by prefecture, which can make searching for a lost item a lot of time and can be a cumbersome process.

Reports on lost items can now be submitted via the internet to the police in Tokyo, Hokkaido, Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Yamanashi, Ishikawa, Mie and Yamaguchi. The online service will be expanded to cover all regions of the country.

Once the lists are fully digitized, the practice of officers developing and keeping paper lists of articles handed in will be abolished.

There were 17 million cases of items handed in to police last year, and 3.5 million reports on lost articles were received.