By HIRAKU HIGA/ Staff Writer
June 4, 2024 at 15:05 JST
Graffiti on a stone pillar near the entrance to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward was erased by the evening of June 2. (Daichi Itakura)
A Chinese man who was recorded spray-painting graffiti on a stone pillar near the entrance to war-related Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo has already left Japan, the Metropolitan Police Department said.
The video footage seen on social media shows the man spray-painting “Toilet” in red on the pillar, which features the name of the Shinto shrine in Chiyoda Ward.
A passer-by called police around 5:50 a.m. on June 1 about the graffiti.
Police are trying to investigate the man in the video and the person who recorded the act on suspicion of damaging property.
According to the MPD’s Public Security Bureau, the man in the video vandalized the pillar around 10 p.m. on May 31 and left Japan a few hours later.
Yasukuni Shrine is seen by China and South Korea as a symbol of Japan’s wartime militarism because 14 Class-A war criminals are enshrined there along with the nation’s 2.46 million war dead.
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