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Foreign tourist steals offering and chugs booze in Japanese cemetery, sparking police investigation

Casey Baseel Sep 2, 2025
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People both living and dead in Japan have reason to be very angry at this moron.

In early August, an Australian tourist who was visiting the town of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, uploaded videos to social media of himself in a local cemetery. Though most people would say it’s sort of weird to photograph or film a cemetery, Japan has no adamant religious taboos against it, and provided the videos were of a discreet and respectful nature, that probably would have been the end of the story.

Instead, though, one of the videos shows the man approaching a grave site, where either family members, friends, or other loved ones had left a canned chu-hi cocktail as an offering for the deceased. The Australian man walks up to the tombstone, places a coin on it, then picks up the can, cracks it open, and chugs it. He then motions to tap the empty can against the tombstone, as though he’s clinking a cheers at a bar or barbecue.

Absolutely none of this is acceptable behavior in Japanese culture. While offerings of food and drink, including alcohol, are commonly left by family and friends, those are for the memory of the deceased. They are most certainly not refreshments for some traveling ditz to help himself too, and no, slapping some coins onto the tombstone and treating it like it’s a vending machine or convenience store counter does not make it any less offensive.

▼ For the record, monetary donations made by visitors to temples and shrines in Japan should be made at collection boxes like the ones in front of the main hall, not left at individual graves, especially the grave of someone you don’t know.

In other uploaded videos, the man shows himself tossing the empty can to the ground inside the cemetery, brandishing a model pistol, and swinging around an itatoba, a wooden grave marker bearing posthumous Buddhist names of individual members of the deceased family (Japanese graves are communal to the family), which he apparently removed from one of the graves.

▼ Itatoba

Though the videos were uploaded in early August, it wasn’t until the end of the month that they began being noticed in large numbers by people in Japan. The response, understandably, has been an angry one, with comments including, “Would you be OK with someone doing this sort of thing at your parents’ grave?”, “Don’t ever come to Japan again,” and “Apologize, grave robber.”

As we’ve discussed before, it can sometimes be hard for foreign visitors to firmly grasp Japan’s attitudes on religion. Unlike Christianity or Islam, there’s no practice of ordinary people attending weekly or daily organized prayer sessions. Even compared to other Buddhist cultures, Japan’s take on the faith involves much less formalized ritual or rigid protocol, and Shinto has little, if any, hard-line dogma. None of that, though, means that Japan is cool with people, of any nationality, being flippant and disrespectful towards its religious traditions, especially those involving preserving the memories of loved ones. Really, this is one of those cases where having even half an ounce of common decency or respect for anyone other than oneself should be more to trigger some self-restraint, but apparently the tourist lacked even those modest quantities of mental and empathetic capability.

Following the backlash in Japan, the Fuji Yoshida Precinct of the Yamanashi Prefectural Police, whose jurisdiction includes the cemetery and its affiliated Buddhist temple, says they are “investigating” the matter, though since they already have video evidence of the guy who did it, the investigation is most likely centered on determining his identity and exploring what, if any, legal leverage they have which could be used to have him answer for his actions or to bar him from returning to the city or country.

Source: J-Cast News via Livedoor News
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso, Wikipedia/Katorisi
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