As part of my research about the JL123 crash and then my article on modifications made to public transportation accidents, I visited a number of memorials around Japan. Although I am currently working on a number of other projects, when an opportunity arises, I continue to visit relevant memorials. For example, in June 2022, I visited one of the memorials for the Concorde AF4590 that I hadn’t been to before. During my trip to Japan in January 2023, although this was primarily for work on updating my book Japan: The Basics to a second edition, I had time to visit another memorial – The Higashi-Ikebukuro Runaway Car Accident Memorial.
The summary of the accident according to the Wikipedia page is as follows:
The Higashi-Ikebukuro runaway car crash was a traffic crash that occurred on April 19, 2019, in Higashi Ikebukuro, Toshima, Tokyo, resulting in 2 deaths and 9 injuries. The crash occurred when an 87-year-old passenger car driver mistakenly stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake and entered an intersection hitting pedestrians and bicyclists. In the aftermath of the incident, there was widespread protest throughout Japan at what was seen as special treatment for the perpetrator due to his status as a retired and decorated senior bureaucrat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higashi-Ikebukuro_runaway_car_accident
As this accident did not involve a form of public transport, it doesn’t fall within the parameters of what I have primarily been studying to date, but given the nature of the accident and that it had a permanent memorial (which I had first learnt about through a news article discussing the memorial and issues relating to accidents caused by elderly drivers – as I discussed in the post Car Crash Memorials and Self-Driving Cars), I wanted to visit it.
In terms of locating the site, I used Google Maps – where it is entered as 東池袋自動車事故慰霊碑. It can also be found by searching for 日出町第二公園, the small park by which the memorial is located.
Here are some pictures of the memorial.
You can see from the first picture how close the memorial is to the main road, and from the third picture how it is also close to a park and some public toilets. The inscription shown in the second picture is only in Japanese (while the shorter inscription in the third picture also contains English), and provides some details about both the accident and the design of the memorial itself. The design is based on a (flower) bud and is done in a way that will catch rain and allow it to flow down the memorial. While it was a clear, crisp, day on the day that I visited, it is tempting to go back on a rainy day to see how the memorial looks then. Compared to many memorials in Japan that I have seen that are based on two praying hands, it was interesting to come across a different approach. Given that a large memorial (which the praying-hands-designs I have seen are) would probably not have been practical in this location, the design works well, in my view.
Although I have focussed on the memorial itself here, it is worth noting that the story about the crash and even what happened with the Wikipedia page related to the crash, is quite interesting. All of this is covered in the Wikipedia page itself.
May the victims of the accident Rest in Peace.
Christopher P. Hood 
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