What’s in it for the finder to be honest enough to hand in the item? It doesn’t seem to be for the finder’s fee or the opportunity to claim the lost property for themselves. Of the 156,000 mobile phones that were handed in that year, none were given to the finder or claimed by the State. (The 17% that were not reunited with their owner were destroyed.)

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The officers based at Japan’s small neighbourhood police stations, called kōban, have a very different image from police elsewhere. These stations are abundant in cities (in Tokyo there are 97 per 100 square kilometres, compared to 11 police stations per 100 square kilometres in London) meaning you are never too far from help.

The officers stationed at the kōban are friendly – they are known to scold misbehaving teens or help the elderly cross the road. “If a child sees a police officer on the road, they usually greet them,” says Masahiro Tamura, a lawyer and law professor at Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan. “For the elderly living in the neighbourhood, police officers will call upon their residence to make sure they are alright.”

So fondly regarded are these officers that they were the subject of a famous comic book series called Kochikame: Tokyo Beat Cops which ran for 40 years.

“Handing in a lost or forgotten item is something that is taught at a young age,” says Tamura. “Children are encouraged to deliver lost items to the kōban, even if it’s 10 yen (7p). A child can deliver this coin to the kōban, the police officer will treat it formally as any lost item. A report is made up, and the coin is taken into police custody. Yet, knowing that no one would report [it], the police then gives the coin back as a reward. Therefore, although it is the same monetary amount, the process of handing it into the police is different from outright taking the money - that is, one is theft, the other is a reward.”

In a study comparing dropped phones and wallets in New York and Tokyo, 88% of phones “lost” by the researchers were handed into the police by Tokyo residents, compared to 6% of the ones “lost” in New York. Likewise, 80% of Tokyo wallets were handed in compared to 10% in New York. The abundance of police stations must make it easier, but is there something else going on.

Honesty

Lost umbrellas, on the other hand, are rarely retrieved by their owners. Of the 338,000 handed in to Lost Property in Tokyo in 2018, only 1% found their way back to their owner. The vast majority – about 81% – were claimed by the finder, which is a peculiarity in itself. In fact, the profligacy of umbrellas can work the other way. Knowing that many people would forget to claim their umbrella, Satoshi, a former resident of Suginami-ku, Tokyo, says he would trick Lost Property into handing one over if he was caught out in the rain. Satoshi would describe the most common umbrella – the clear plastic ones sold at every convenience store for 500 yen (£3.50) – and since there were so many of them just lying around at the counter, he says he would always get one.

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