Priests taking care of a Japanese shrine made famous through its inclusion in Ghost of Tsushima have banned all tourists from their site.
Watazumi Shrine is found on Tsushima Island. Most famous for its half-sunken Torii gate, it’s thought to have inspired Ghost of Tsushima’s in-game Scarlet Rock shrine, and received $260,000 from the game’s community after it was damaged in a 2020 typhoon. Now, however, its caretakers have issued a statement banning all tourists from visiting.
In a post on Instagram (via Automaton Media, translated by DeepL), a statement from the shrine’s priests says that as of March 23, “entry into the shrine precincts is prohibited” except for local parishioners and worshippers. No photography or video recording would be permitted, and even domestic bus tours were banned.
This post comes after “an extremely serious and unforgivable act of disrespect was committed by a foreigner” at the shrine. Even after repeated consultations with local police, city hall, and the tourism association, no solution could be reached, so the shrine’s priests made the decision to ban all tourism to the location.
The statement is closed by saying: “The way inbound tourists are destroying places, things, and people cherished by the Japanese people is nothing short of the collapse of Japanese culture. I hereby express my regrets and take action to protect the hearts and minds of the shrine and its people.”
The news of the ban comes amid controversies around the virtual depiction of shrines, via Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Last week, the topic was brought to the Japanese Prime Minister, who said that “defacing a shrine is out of the question.” In the lead-up to the game, officials at the Itate Hyozu shrine issued their own concerns after footage emerged of players destroying part of it in Assassin’s Creed Shadows preview builds. Since then, Ubisoft has pushed an Assassin’s Creed Shadows day one patch to make certain objects in the buildings indestructible.
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