American tourist arrested in Japan for allegedly defacing shrine gate

TOKYO — An American tourist has been arrested in Japan for allegedly carving letters into a pillar of a gate to a shrine in Tokyo.

Steve Lee Hayes, 65, was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of property damage, a spokesman from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department confirmed to NBC News.

Hayes, a U.S. citizen, had “carved alphabet letters onto a pillar of a gate of a shrine” in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo on Tuesday, police said. It’s not clear what state Hayes is from.

The Japan Times reported that the letters were carved into a wooden pillar of a traditional entrance, known as a torii gate, at the Meiji Shrine.

Hayes allegedly used his fingernails to etch five letters onto one of the torii gates, and was identified as the suspect by security footage around the shrine, the outlet reported.

It’s not clear if he remains in custody or has been released.

Meiji Shrine is a Shinto shrine in Tokyo, and popular tourist destination, that “commemorate(s) the virtue of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken who took the initiative to make a foundation of modernized Japan,” according to the destination’s website.

Torii gates are iconic structures that mark the boundary between the everyday and the sacred at Shinto shrines across Japan.

Defacing sites or breaking the rules at important international sites has led to charges and serious fines for tourists on many occasions.

Last year, a tourist was arrested after being caught on video defacing the wall of the colosseum in Rome by carving a love note into it. In 2017, Thai authorities fined two American tourists for public indecency for posing for a “butt selfie” in front of a famous Buddhist temple.

And in 2022, a tourist who climbed the steps of the Temple of Kukulcán, which lies in the center of Chichen Itza in Mexico, was arrested and fined because climbing the Mayan ruins is prohibited, The Independent reported.