Japanese car recall check: how to look up a chassis number, and what the result means

For a car that's still in Japan, the quickest recall check is the maker's own search. Toyota and Nissan both let you type in the chassis number from the shaken certificate and see which recalls the car is covered by. Toyota and Nissan also say their searches show whether the work has been done. It's a useful check, and it's free. But it's a check on one thing only: recall work. It says nothing about rust, wear or damage.

Three kinds of action, not one

Japan's transport ministry describes three kinds of action a maker can take on cars already sold:

• Recall (rikōru): the car doesn't meet, or may stop meeting, Japan's vehicle safety standards because of a design or manufacturing problem.
• Improvement measure (kaizen taisaku): the problem isn't covered by the safety standards, but it can't be overlooked for safety or the environment, and it comes from design or manufacturing.
• Service campaign (sābisu kyanpēn): a fault that isn't directly about safety or the environment, which the maker fixes anyway.

A maker's search may show all three. When you read the result, check which kind each item is.

Where to look

The transport ministry publishes recalls by month, with the make, model and maker, and has an English list. Its own Japanese search shows each recall as a range of chassis numbers. The ministry says a range can include cars that aren't actually covered, so for a single car it sends you to the maker. It also notes that the main makers let you search by the chassis number on the shaken certificate.

The makers' own searches are where a single car gets an answer:

• Toyota has a search by chassis number in Japanese. It covers recalls and improvement measures from January 1999 and service campaigns from January 2002, and shows the status of the work. Its English page covers the Takata airbag recall only.
• Nissan has an English search by chassis number (it calls it the VIN). It covers recalls and improvement measures from 30 March 2001 and service campaigns from 17 January 2003. Nissan says that from 1 April 2026, a car whose work has been done is shown as "Completed" in that search, instead of being marked on the car.

Other makers have their own searches. The ministry's FAQ points you to each maker.

What we found on our own car

We ran our own car, a Toyota Prius α, through Toyota's search on 3 October 2026. It came back with four items:

• Three recalls, all marked as done. One from 2015 and one from 2018 were about the hybrid system's control software. One from 2016 was a fuel vapour part that can crack and let fuel smell into the car. Each shows "done" (jisshi-zumi) in the status column.
• One service campaign from January 2018, with an asterisk instead of a status. It covers the brake booster on some Prius and Camry models. Toyota's own page explains the asterisk: owners are contacted by post when a warning light comes on, so the search doesn't show "done" or "not done" for it.

Two things stood out. An asterisk isn't the same as "not done", so read the maker's page for any item before you worry about it. And Toyota notes that its status column shows repairs carried out in Japan, and can take two weeks or more to update after the work.

None of this tells you anything about the rust on our car's front struts, which is the kind of thing you'd want to know before buying a car like ours.

What a recall check can't tell you

• The condition of the car. A recall check is about known faults across a range of cars. It doesn't look at this one.
• Anything before the search's start date. Toyota's search starts in 1999, Nissan's in 2001.
• How well the work was done, only whether it's recorded as done.
• Faults nobody has recalled. A clean result means no recall on record, not no problems.
• What happens once the car leaves Japan. Whether a Japanese recall can still be done by a dealer in your country is a question for that maker's office where you live.

A recall check tells you whether the maker has called the car back. It doesn't tell you what the car is like today.

If the recall check is clean and you still want to know about the car itself, send us the listing. We'll tell you what can be checked at the dealer and what can't.

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How to check from abroad

1. Get the chassis number from the seller, from the shaken certificate or the model plate. See what a Japanese chassis number can tell you.
2. Run it through the maker's own search. Nissan's is in English. For Toyota, the Japanese page has two boxes: the part before the hyphen and the part after.
3. Note each item's kind and status: recall, improvement measure or service campaign; done or not.
4. If something is outstanding, ask the dealer whether they'll have it done before the car leaves Japan, and ask for it in writing.
5. Keep a copy of the result with your papers.
6. If you post the chassis number online to ask for help, hide the last digits.

Written by Yoshiaki Sagara, a paintless dent repair and detailing technician in Japan. He looks at cars for overseas buyers through Ninja Desk Japan. About us

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