A shrine employee discovered Chinese characters and Latin alphabet letters, including the word 'toilet' in Chinese, written in black on a stone pillar at the entrance around 3:50 a.m. local time. The incident follows a similar defacement in June, when the word 'toilet' was spray-painted in red on the same pillar.
The June attack led to the indictment of a Chinese man living in Japan for property damage and desecration of a shrine. Two other Chinese men are wanted in connection with that incident, which gained attention after a video on Chinese social media appeared to show a man urinating on the shrine's name engraving.
Yasukuni, which enshrines Japan's war dead including convicted war criminals, has long been a source of diplomatic tension between Japan and its Asian neighbors, particularly South Korea and China.
