A Chinese national living in Japan on Friday admitted to his involvement in a graffiti incident at the war-linked Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo in May.
Jiang Zhuojun, 29, pleaded guilty at the Tokyo District Court to charges of damaging property and disrespecting a place of worship, and said the motive behind his actions was not related to history issues.
Screenshot from a video posted on Chinese social media shows a pillar at Yasukuni Shrine sprayed-painted with the word “toilet.” (Kyodo)
“I was protesting against the discharge of treated radioactive water,” he said in court, referring to the treated water from Fukushima nuclear power plant that has been released into the ocean since 2023. “I wanted to protect the ocean.”
Jiang was indicted for allegedly conspiring with two other men to vandalize a stone pillar at the shrine, and spray-paint the word “toilet” in English, on May 31. The damage is estimated at 4.6 million yen ($30,000).
The two other men are also Chinese nationals, Dong Guangming and Xu Laiyu, who left Japan for China on June 1. A video was posted on Chinese social media showing a man appearing to urinate on the stone pillar before spray-painting it.
Dong and Xu were placed on the wanted list in July when Jiang was arrested.
Yasukuni has long been a source of diplomatic friction with China and other Asian countries as it honors Japan’s wartime leaders, who were convicted as war criminals in a post-World War II international tribunal, along with the war dead.
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