Japanese Police Arrest American Tourist For Defacing Meiji Shrine’s Gate: REPORT

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (TMPD) took a 65-year-old American tourist into custody Wednesday for allegedly defacing a gate at the famous Meiji Shrine.

Authorities named the alleged perpetrator as Steve Lee Hayes and claimed that the suspect confessed to the crime of property damage to the gate, The Japan Times reported. Hayes reportedly said he “wrote his family members’ names.”

Tokyo police have arrested a 65-year-old American man on suspicion of property damage after he allegedly carved letters into the wooden pillar of a torii gate at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward. https://t.co/zTEiGhJJWY

— The Japan Times (@japantimes) November 14, 2024

Hayes allegedly employed his fingernails to carve five letters into a wooden torii gate Tuesday at approximately 11:15 a.m., according to The Japan Times. Police used security footage to determine that Hayes was the alleged perpetrator. Authorities suspect the incident was an act of mischief.

Torii gates are structures that mark out the border between the holy and secular at Shinto shrines in Japanese culture, according to the Travel Japan website. A single bow in front of the gate is considered appropriate, but is not always done. People also frequently avoid walking through the center of the gate, instead going toward the left or right sides. (RELATED: Young American Woman Goes Missing While Traveling Abroad. Police Arrest Man For Murder)

Hayes showed up in Japan on Monday with family to see the sights, according to the TMPD’s international crime division, The Japan Times reported. Police are also looking into other etchings akin to kanji that were made on the pillars of another torii gate at the shrine, according to the outlet. Kanji is one of the three Japanese scripts that was imported from the Korean peninsula in the 5th century, Japan-guide.com noted. The script uses Chinese characters and consists of ideograms.

Defacing structures or violating rules at internationally recognized sites can lead to charges and significant fines for visitors, NBC News reported. The Meiji Shrine is a popular tourist destination that was founded in 1920 “to commemorate the virtue of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken who took the initiative to make a foundation of modernized Japan,” the shrine’s website said.

Emperor Meiji reigned during a transformative period in Japanese history from 1867 to 1912, Encyclopedia Britannica noted. It was under his reign that Japan shifted from a feudal society to an industrialized great power.