A 65-year-old American tourist was arrested for allegedly etching letters onto a traditional wooden gate at a Tokyo shrine, police said on Thursday, the latest example of bad behaviour by visitors flooding back to Japan post-pandemic.
Steve Hayes, who arrived in Japan for a holiday with his family on Monday, reportedly used his fingernails to scratch one of the gate’s pillars as a prank at Meiji Jingu, one of the capital’s most famous shrines.
Hayes is suspected of carving five letters of the Latin alphabet in a space measuring roughly 5cm by 6cm on the structure at around 11:20am on Tuesday.
A police spokeswoman said the man was arrested on Wednesday “on suspicion of damaging property” at the shrine complex in the city centre.
The incident comes after a woman from Chile faced an online backlash last month for posting a clip of herself doing pull-up exercises on a red gate at a different Japanese shrine.
The fitness influencer with 139,000 Instagram followers later posted an apology video on the platform, saying it “wasn’t my intention to show disrespect”.
