Hayes was accused of using his fingernails to scratch five letters into a torii gate at the Meiji Jingu shrine on Tuesday morning, but he claimed that he was only 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, the police said.
The damage was discovered by staff at the 1920 built Meiji Jingu shrine to honour the spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife Empress Shoken, and reported to the police same day,alerted police. Hayes was arrested the day after.
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.
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.
Comments
Post a Comment