Tokyo police have obtained an arrest warrant for a Chinese teenage boy for alleged property damage after graffiti was found at the war-linked Yasukuni shrine in August, investigative sources said Thursday.
The suspect, who also faces a charge of desecration of a place of worship, has already left Japan for Hong Kong. He is accused of writing Chinese characters meaning “toilet” on a stone pillar of the Tokyo shrine using a black felt-tip pen shortly after 10 p.m. on Aug. 18.
The suspect was caught on a security camera climbing onto the pedestal of the stone pillar on the evening of that day and is believed to have posted an image of the graffiti on Chinese social media, the sources said.
Photo taken on Aug. 19, 2024, shows a stone pillar covered with a blue sheet at the entrance of the war-linked Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo after graffiti, including characters reading “toilet” in Chinese, was found earlier in the day, following a similar incident in June. (Kyodo) ==Kyodo
He is thought to have written the graffiti alone, although he came to Japan with several people a few days before the incident.
The same pillar was defaced in May with the English word “toilet” in red spray paint, leading to the indictment of a Chinese man by Tokyo prosecutors in July for property damage and desecration of a place of worship.
Two other Chinese men who both left the country have been put on wanted lists for their alleged involvement in the May incident.
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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