Man under 20 suspected in Yasukuni Shrine graffiti incident

A man under the age of 20 who left for China earlier this week has been named as a suspect in a graffiti incident at the war-related Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, investigative sources said on Friday.

The suspect was caught on surveillance camera on Sunday evening climbing to the base of a stone pillar, where the graffiti was found the next day. According to sources, he posted a picture of the graffiti on Chinese social media.

The graffiti, believed to have been drawn with a black marker, consisted of Chinese characters and the Western alphabet and included Chinese words meaning “toilet,” police said.

Photo taken on Aug. 19, 2024, shows a stone pillar covered with a blue cloth at the entrance to the war-torn Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo after graffiti was discovered earlier in the day, including characters spelling out “toilet” in Chinese, following a similar incident in June. (Kyodo) ==Kyodo

The suspect, who is accused of property damage, had arrived in Japan with several people a few days before the incident, but had headed to the shrine in the Chiyoda district alone. He later went to the Shinjuku district, where his hotel was located, the sources said.

In May, the same pillar, on which the name of the place of worship was engraved, was defaced with the English word “toilet” sprayed in red paint.

In July, a Chinese man living in Japan was charged with property damage and desecration of a place of worship.

Two other Chinese nationals are wanted for their suspected involvement in the May incidents, which attracted public attention mainly because of a video posted on Chinese social media showing a man apparently urinating on the pillar.

The Yasukuni Shrine has become a source of diplomatic tension with China and other Asian countries because the more than 2.4 million war dead commemorated at the shrine include wartime Japanese leaders who were convicted as war criminals by an international tribunal after World War II.

Related coverage:

Another graffiti attack on Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine