“Prefectural police in Osaka, Nagasaki and Kumamoto magnetically attached GPS trackers to 19 cars and motorbikes used by the suspect and three others to monitor their movements.”

The article says that the Osaka District Court basically said “no warrant, no problem.” The United States reached a different conclusion about this sort of thing in 2012:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012)

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/editorial/AJ201501290041