Police arrest US man for allegedly scratching letters into Japanese shrine

65-year-old man allegedly told police he defaced Shinto shrine as a ‘prank’.

Japanese police have arrested a 65-year-old American tourist for allegedly defacing a Tokyo shrine.

The man, identified as Steve Hayes, is accused of using his fingernails to scratch five letters into a torii gate at the Meiji Jingu shrine on Tuesday morning.

Hayes said he was writing the name of a family member into the gate – which represents the border between the living and sacred worlds in the Shinto religion – as a prank, according to the police.

Staff at the Meiji Jingu shrine, constructed in 1920 to honour the spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife Empress Shoken, discovered the damage the same day and alerted police, who arrested Hayes on Wednesday.

It was not immediately clear how they identified Hayes, who authorities say arrived in Japan with his family on Monday, nor what charges he could face.

The Meiji Jingu shrine was constructed in 1920 to honour the spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife Empress Shoken [Sebastian Kahnert/picture alliance via Getty Images]

It is the second such incident at a shrine in the Japanese capital this week.

On Monday, police said they were investigating after the kanji character for “death” was graffitied on two spots of a stone wall at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine honouring Japan’s war dead.

The announcement followed two other defacement incidents at the same shrine – which has been a source of diplomatic friction with China and other Asian countries due to its commemoration of Japan’s World War II leaders – in recent months.

In June, the word “toilet” was found spray-painted in red on a stone pillar at the shrine, while footage circulated on social media of a man urinating on the monument.

A Chinese man living in Japan was charged with property damage and desecration of a place of worship in July, while two other Chinese men have been put on wanted lists.

In August, Chinese characters and some letters from the Latin alphabet were also written on the shrine with a black felt-tip pen, police said.

Japan welcomed a record 17.78 million foreign visitors in the first half of this year, with the weak yen helping to propel tourist numbers above pre-pandemic levels.

The influx of visitors has delivered a boost to Japan’s economy, but also prompted grumbles from some locals fed up with poor behaviour and breaches of cultural etiquette by visitors.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies