Sendai to turn off Japan’s last 3 ‘UFO’ traffic lights, but similar set remains in Nagoya

SENDAI — Japan’s last three sets of “UFO-style” traffic lights will be removed from intersections in this Miyagi Prefecture capital at the end of July due to aging, but in fact, a similar set is still working in Nagoya.

These traffic lights have been popularly known as “UFO style” because of their unique shape, floating in midair while emitting green, yellow and red lights in all directions. Developed by a manufacturer in Aichi Prefecture in the 1970s, there used to be a total of around a dozen units in prefectures including Aichi and Miyagi. Local residents in Sendai who have been accustomed to them over the years are sad to say goodbye, but their “gene” is still alive in their hometown Nagoya.

The unit consists of four-way traffic signals for pedestrians and vehicles integrated and is suspended above the center of an intersection. The traffic lights can be installed at narrow intersections because they require only one support pole instead of a total of eight required for typical traffic signals.

According to the company history of Nagoya Electric Works Co., headquartered in Ama, Aichi Prefecture, the prefectural police asked the firm to develop a new type of traffic light in the 1970s. At the time, the number of fatalities from traffic accidents nationwide was hovering around 10,000 per year, and the number was particularly high in Aichi Prefecture.

“We’ll get right on it,” an employee of the company immediately responded upon receiving the request. A designer sketched out the concept on paper, referring to traffic lights suspended by wires that they had seen on a visit to Europe. Thus, within two weeks, the UFO lights were conceived.

The UFO traffic lights were adopted for the first time at an intersection in the Osu district in Nagoya’s Naka Ward in September 1975. It is a busy place with people visiting Osu Kannon temple and the local shopping district. Shinya Okuda, 46, a junior high school teacher in the nearby city of Nisshin, who has been visiting the Osu area since he was a student, recalled, “It was so familiar that people would understand if someone said, ‘Let’s meet at the strange traffic lights in Osu.'”

From then, at least a dozen of the UFO lights were installed in Miyagi Prefecture and two in Gunma Prefecture to watch over the safety of the communities.

However, Nagoya Electric Works withdrew from manufacturing traffic lights in the mid-1980s, and the use of LEDs in traffic signals has progressed, so the old UFO lights have gradually been replaced by more common ones. The three remaining in Sendai are believed to be the last in the country, and their removal has been decided.

On July 21 of this year, residents were seen pointing their cameras at a set of UFO traffic lights in Sendai’s Wakabayashi Ward. A 54-year-old civil servant living in the city’s Miyagino Ward was looking at them while touring the last UFO lights by bicycle. He said, “There used to be a set in my neighborhood. It will be sad to see them go.”

However, the gene of the UFO lights has been inherited at the intersection in Nagoya’s Osu area, where the first UFO set was installed. The successor, installed in 2010, has evolved to the LED version, but still retains the UFO function of handling pedestrians and cars from four directions using a single unit.

According to the prefectural police, the successor was made by combining ordinary traffic signals. The reason they made it resemble a UFO was because “water and sewage pipes and other equipment are buried underground, and it was not possible to secure space to install support poles at the four corners of the intersection.”

Regarding the UFO gene having been inherited, a representative at Nagoya Electric Works commented, “We are proud of the know-how that our predecessors have left behind, as the shape that was thoroughly created, including visibility, within the constraints of installation, has been carried on even as the times have changed and the use of LEDs has spread.”

(Japanese original by Yuki Ogawa, Sendai Bureau)