The Port Authority is also suffering from the flood of “vehicles without license plates” at Daikoku Wharf.

When one hears the name “Daikoku Pier,” one probably thinks of the Daikoku Parking Area, also known as the “car lover’s mecca. When entering the Daikoku Parking Area, one can see a large number of cars waiting to be loaded. It is not unusual to see huge car carriers with MOL (Mitsui O.S.K. Lines) or NYK (Nippon Yusen Kaisha, Ltd.) on them. (MOL) and NYK (NYK Line).

Ships exporting cars can be roughly divided into RO-RO ships (ships that can load and unload cars on their own) and container ships (ships that load containers). More than 1.2 million used cars are exported from Japan to overseas each year, and Daikoku Wharf is one of the largest exporters in Japan. It is also a hub for “transit,” where new and used cars from foreign countries that are not scheduled for sale in Japan stop en route to be loaded onto other vessels for transport to their destinations.

At the port of Daikoku Wharf, there is a place where vehicles without license plates are lined up in a row. Nearly 100 vehicles, some of them large trucks, line both sides of a 500-meter stretch of road, with no space between them. It is almost as if every vehicle in sight is a vehicle without a license plate number.

According to a marine container driver friend of the author, “It has been there for about 10 years. The number has increased in recent years. Checking with Google Street View, comparing the current situation with the one taken in ’19, the number of vehicles has certainly increased.

At first, I thought, “They don’t have license plates, so maybe they are cars that have been scrapped but are being illegally dumped because they are having trouble disposing of them. However, most of the vehicles without license plates were Japanese cars, mainly relatively neat minivans and compact cars. In some cases, cars of exactly the same type were lined up in the same spot, such as three Proboxes and three Suzuki Alts. Besides, the author visits Daikoku Futo several times a year, and every time he goes there, the cars are replaced.

This is unnatural for illegally dumped vehicles. Where in the world did these cars come from? When we asked the Yokohama Port and Harbor Bureau, which has jurisdiction over the Daikoku Pier, we received a surprising answer.

–What are those cars abandoned on the roads in Daikoku Pier?

Most of those cars are used cars that will be exported in the future. Most of them are used cars that will be exported in the near future. The storage area for shipping (by a company that handles customs clearance and exports used cars) is probably full and cannot accommodate them, so they are temporarily stored there. If you look closely, you will see some cars with auction sheets or symbols written on them. In some cases, there is no place to put the cars that have been sold at the auction site, and they are probably using that place as a “temporary storage area. We have given them repeated warnings and guidance, but it doesn’t seem to be going away.”

–I have the impression that the number of vehicles has increased a lot between now and around 2019.

Yes, as you say. There is a reason for this. Daikoku Wharf used to be “the largest car-handling base in eastern Japan,” and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the City of Yokohama have been improving the wharf by deepening and extending the length of the wharf since FY2003 in order to accommodate the increasing size of car carriers and the number of vessels landing at Daikoku Wharf. The city of Yokohama has been improving the quay by deepening the water depth and extending the length of the quay.

One of these changes is the conversion of the terminal from a container terminal to a car carrier (RO-RO) terminal. When the terminal was used for container ships, it was necessary to keep the roads around the terminal open for the entry and exit of trailers carrying huge containers. However, after the container terminal was discontinued, space in that area became available. Cars without license plates began to be placed in that empty space.’ The increase in the number of abandoned vehicles compared to 19 years probably had something to do with the elimination of the container terminal.”

–Is there any possibility that the vehicles are stolen?

Is there a possibility that the vehicles are stolen? There have been times when we have been contacted by the police and have had to be present to confirm that a vehicle was stolen. There have not been many cases where a vehicle has been found to be stolen or stolen-related, but there is a possibility that some vehicles have been mixed in with others.

Cars without license plates that were thought to have been abandoned at the docks are in fact “unplaced cars” waiting to be exported. Japanese cars are very popular overseas. The Port Authority is troubled by the large number of these cars on public roads in the wharf, but it seems that it will take some time to solve the problem.