Hi Mate
do you mean buying one here, or in Japan?
If it's a local car, you get the vin/chassis number, engine number and as much related info and do a REVS or VSR check with your local roads authority - such as Vicroads or the RTA. They will give you a report detailing if the vehicle has ever been written off. There are two types of write offs - one is a statutory write off, these can never be reregistered as they are on a register of written off vehicles. Chances are if a car you are looking at had ever been written off in this fashion, the check would be pointless as it would have had to have another cars identity put on it - ie, dodgy as hell
The other method of marking a vehicles as a write off is a financial write off - where it's not viable to fix the car, the insurance company write it off. The car can be repaired and then inspected by an engineer to ensure it's safe to go back on the road. This is recorded against a vehicles history and will come up on the REVS check
Hope this helps
Cheers
Aaron