Steve Hayes, a 65-year-old American tourist, has been arrested by Japanese police officers on Wednesday. The man is being accused of defacing the Meiji Jingu shrine in Tokyo.
According to a statement by the police, Hayes allegedly damaged one of Tokyo’s most iconic shrines by etching letters in its wooden gate. He did this while visiting the Meiji Jingu site with his family on Tuesday, 12 November and used his fingernails to scratch five letters, each approximately 5 to 6 centimetres high.
The Meiji Jingu shrine was originally built in 1920 in honour of the spirits of Emperor Meiji, the first ruler of Imperial Japan, and his wife Empress Shoken. According to Shinto religion beliefs, the gate represents the boundary between the living and the sacred world.
The Japanese police arrested Hayes at his hotel on Wednesday, 13 November. According to them, CCTV had allowed them to identify the American tourist while he was defacing the shrine. He was arrested on “suspicion of damaging property”.
65-year-old American tourist Steve Lee Hayes, reportedly an attorney in Florida, was arrested in Japan for carving initials into a sacred Tokyo shrine with his fingernails. pic.twitter.com/txHagNEDQF
— NewsCat 📰🗞️NO DMs (@typocatCAv2) November 15, 2024
The incident is the second in just a week time to touch Tokyo’s sacred monuments. Just a day earlier, someone defaced the city’s Yasukuni shrine by writing the kanji character for “death” on its stone wall. The Yasukuni shrine was built to honour Japan’s war dead. At the same shrine, a Chinese resident of Japan was arrested in June for spray-painting the word “toilet” on the walls.
Last month, another incident involving a Japanese shrine sparked controversy. Two Chilean fitness influencers were accused of disrespecting the Japanese culture after having filmed themselves doing pull-ups at a torii gate (part of a Shinto shrine) in Sapporo, Hokkaido. One of the sisters later apologised for their actions.
“I want to apologize for my actions in Japan. I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m really sorry for what I did without thinking. Please no messages or comments. Thank you”, Maria del Mar Perez Banus wrote on their Instagram profile @mmgymsisters.
The fact that Japan is facing difficulties involving tourists doesn’t come as a surprise. This year, the country is seeing a surge in tourist numbers, after a decline during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Japan has stated it wants to welcome 60 million tourists a year in the next five or six years, which would mean doubling the 2019 record.
However, the rising tourism numbers aren’t just boosting the local economy, they are also causing tensions between visitors and residents. Many local authorities are thus taking the matter into their own hands by imposing special tourist fares and visitor limits, as is currently the case for Mt Fuji.
