If We Lose Something inTokyo, Will We Get It Back?

The things a family cannot travel without. Among the main types of lost property the Tokyo police report, phones went back to their owner most often (83.0%), then ID cards and certificates (70.3%), then wallets and purses (67.2%). Across all 4,750,389 items handled in 2025, 28.1% went home, and by value 71.8% of the cash handed in did.

Umbrellas (1.7%), jewelry and precious metals (1.9%), clothing and shoes (4.3%), cameras and eyeglasses (4.5%) and electrical goods (6.6%). Bags sit in between, at 26.7%.

Largely because nobody asks for them. In 2025, 460,667 items of clothing and shoes were handed in, and only 52,983 were reported lost. For umbrellas it was 331,882 handed in and 9,154 reported lost. After going unclaimed, 60.4% of clothing and 61.9% of umbrellas went to the person who found them.

Yes. An item nobody asks for cannot go back to its owner, and the figures show a great deal of what Tokyo hands in is never claimed. Reporting is the only part of the process a family controls.

Partly because people ask, and partly because of how the system works: no phone or ID card went to its finder in 2025, and for ID the law forbids it, so an unclaimed phone has fewer places to go than an unclaimed jacket.

No. The 83% is a share of phones handed in, not of phones lost. People reported losing 225,236 phones in 2025, and 144,381 were handed in. A phone nobody hands in is not in the count.

Yes. There were 4,538,244 found-property reports in 2025, up 3.0% on 2024 and more than in any year of the police’s ten-year table, which starts in 2016.

The figures are Tokyo’s alone and do not separate residents from visitors. Nothing in them is about children or tourists in particular.