A visitor took this photo at Tokyo’s Meiji Jingu Shrine.

Police officers were gathering around the torii gate to check something.

Marks, which seemed like Kanji characters and seemed as if they were carved with a sharp object, were on this pillar.

There was also other damage around these characters.

A security staff found the mark and reported it to police on November 10.

The damaged pillar is at the Second Torii, located on the path leading from Harajuku Station to the main shrine building at Meiji Jingu Shrine.

Meiji Jingu did not find any abnormalities when it checked the torii in June of this year.

It found the damage on November 10.

It is not the first time the Second Torii has been vandalized. 

Different Kanji characters were written in June as well.

Meiji Jingu  has been suffering from a slew of graffiti damage to the torii gates in the past few years.

The First Torii was also graffitied immediately after it was rebuilt in July 2022. 

A fence has been built around the gate to prevent people from approaching.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is investigating the most recent graffiti as a case of property damage.

Meiji Jingu is not the only prestigious shrine in Tokyo that is suffering graffiti damage.

Police officers and workers at Yasukuni Shrine were busy wiping the stone on November 11.

The move came after an elementary school student who was walking nearby found a kanji meaning “death” written on the wall.

In May of this year, a Chinese national used a red spray to write “toilet” on the stone pillar at the shrine. 

The suspect said that he wrote the word as a way to protest the treated water discharge from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

The suspect said that “if Japan pollutes the ocean used by the people of the world,” he will damage “the place of spiritual faith that the Japanese most worship.”

The suspect was detained by Chinese police in August for a different case.

A different graffiti was also found on a nearby wall at Yasukuni Shrine together with the character meaning “death.”