A minicar covered in graffiti, a weather beaten sports car looking naked without tires and an automobile that appears to have been torched.
Hardly a common sight in Tokyo.
And yet, the shoulder of a road in the Shin-Kiba factory area of the capital’s Koto Ward has become a sort of skid row for abandoned cars.
More than 20 vehicles have been left to rot, posing a headache for local authorities and the police hoping to locate the rightful owners.
They would like nothing better than to clear the bleak site, which gives the appearance of a slum area.
The vehicles are concentrated along an approximately 1-kilometer-long stretch of a two-lane road facing Tokyo Bay and the nearby Odaiba waterfront area.
Some of the vehicles sport dents, suggesting a collision of some kind, or are covered in spray paint graffiti. Their interiors are littered with trash, including disused home electronic appliances and other household items.
One vehicle had a single-seat sofa stuck into its broken windshield.
Many of them have license plates with Tokyo place names, but others are from outside the capital, such as Chiba, Yokohama and Mie.
“The area, located at the tip of a seaside factory area, attracts little attention,” said an official with the facilities maintenance division of the Koto ward government, which oversees the road. “Abandoned vehicles seemed to grow in number because the area was previously not designated a no-parking zone.”
Many of the vehicles are commercial-use minitrucks with black license plates. Some were probably dumped by businesses that went bust, the official added.
SOMEBODY ELSE’S PROBLEM
“Two or three vehicles were dumped sometime around 2022 and then the number gradually grew,” said a man who works at a nearby factory. “At one point, there were more than 50 vehicles.”
A man who works at a different factory sounded livid about the situation.
“You cannot talk of this in the same breath as throwing away empty cans,” said the man, 63. “It’s just so selfish of people to dump their automobiles here.”
A 41-year-old resident of Koto Ward who was taking his child to a baseball class, said: “This area is deserted and looks so eerie at night. I hope these vehicles will be removed quickly.”
A crackdown on illegal parking led Koto Ward, working in tandem with police, to designate the area a no-parking zone last December.
But in January, there were 44 abandoned vehicles.
The authorities use chassis numbers when they can to track down the owners.
If ownership cannot be determined and deemed to no longer matter, the ward government and the police, upon mutual agreement, will take steps to dispose of the vehicle.
In that case, ward authorities commission a private business to remove the vehicle with all pertinent expenses borne by taxpayers’ money.
“I feel really sorry about this,” said a ward official. “We want the owners to take responsibility and dispose of the vehicles themselves, instead of leaving them on the roadside just because they think they will no longer need them.”
Abandoning a vehicle for a long stretch is the same as illegal disposal of waste under the Law on Waste Management and Public Cleaning,” said lawyer Mikio Uehara. “Even if the automobile was first parked there before the area was designated a no-parking zone, it could still constitute illegal disposal of waste.”
Illegal dumping of an automobile can result in imprisonment of up to five years or a fine of up to 10 million yen ($66,000), or both.
AloJapan.com