# 遺失物法 / Lost Property Act — 第一条 (Article 1)

- Law: 遺失物法 (Lost Property Act), 平成十八年法律第七十三号
- English title "Lost Property Act": Ministry of Justice translation database, which lists the title
- Kind: Act — the distinction between 法律 (Act), 政令 (Cabinet Order), 省令 (Ministerial Order) and 条例 (local ordinance) decides who may issue it and what it may say.
- Provision: 第一条 (Article 1)（趣旨） — address `art-1`
- Text in force since: 2025-06-01
- URL (the page that opens at this provision): https://japanlaw.org/en/lost-property-act/art-1
- Permanent URL (e-Gov law ID, never renamed): https://japanlaw.org/l/418AC0000000073/art-1
- Every provision below carries its address and both URLs on the line under it.
- Japanese text: e-Gov 法令検索, Digital Agency (デジタル庁). English: as marked on each line below.

Only the Japanese as published by the government has legal effect; the text
below is a copy of it. Every English rendering below is a translation and
says which kind: the Ministry of Justice's translation, or this
site's machine translation, whose model and date the Sources list names.
They are never merged and never substituted for one another.

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### 第一条（趣旨） — Purpose
<sup>caption: machine translation, not official</sup>
<sup>art-1 · https://japanlaw.org/en/lost-property-act/art-1 · https://japanlaw.org/l/418AC0000000073/art-1</sup>

**第一項**  この法律は、遺失物、埋蔵物その他の占有を離れた物の拾得及び返還に係る手続その他その取扱いに関し必要な事項を定めるものとする。
<sup>art-1/par-1 · https://japanlaw.org/en/lost-property-act/art-1/par-1 · https://japanlaw.org/l/418AC0000000073/art-1/par-1</sup>
This Act is to provide for the procedures for the finding and return of lost property, buried things and other things that have left possession, and other matters necessary for their handling.
<sup>machine translation, not official</sup>

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## Sources

- e-Gov 法令検索, Digital Agency (デジタル庁) — 遺失物法 — the text in force from 2025-06-01 (https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/law/418AC0000000073/20250601_504AC0000000068), retrieved 2026-10-11
- Japanese Law Translation Database System, Ministry of Justice (法務省) — 遺失物法 — its English title as the Ministry of Justice's translation database lists it (https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/1640), retrieved 2026-10-11
- claude-sonnet-5-5 — Machine translation, batch lost-property-act-20261011T093710-001, translated 2026-10-11
- This site's parser, version 186 — 遺失物法 — structure, counts, cross-references and defined terms, computed 2026-10-11