Sacred sites are not the place for gymnastics.

As the number of foreign tourists to Japan soars to record highs, so to do the number of overseas travellers caught behaving badly during their visits. With higher-than-usual cases being reported, the Japanese media has even coined a term for it, “Meiwaku Gaikokujin“, which translates as “Nuisance Foreigner“, and the latest case involves a tourist who was seen doing pull-ups on a torii gate at a Japanese shrine.

The incident was captured on film less than a week ago by the woman doing the pull-ups, who shared the video on social media. According to local news reports, the woman is of Chilean nationality and was visiting Japan for sightseeing with her sister when the two of them stopped by a shrine in Sapporo, the capital city of Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost prefecture. This is where one of the sisters pulled herself up on a torii gate and performed dance movements to a popular TikTok song with her chin raised above the lower bar. The other sister also shared a video of herself at the shrine, and she too caused an uproar with viewers as she performed a handstand at the main torii gate at the entrance to the shrine.

The two sisters have a shared Instagram account with over 130,000 followers, and this is where they posted the videos of their shrine visit. It didn’t take long for their antics to go viral, with media outlets in the sisters’ hometown quickly picking up on the story, with one headline reading: “Anger at a Chilean woman who did pull-ups on a Japanese torii“.

▼ This news report shows the videos.

The anger came from both inside and outside of Japan, with foreign tourists in Japan even expressing their disapproval, calling it rude and pointing out that shrines aren’t places for this sort of behaviour. Locals were even more incensed, because although shrines have become popular tourist sites, they are holy grounds where everything is considered sacred, and the gods, who are ever-present, can see everything you do.

Handstands and pull-ups are a sign of disrespect to the gods that no Japanese local would ever think to perform on shrine grounds, so this type of behaviour from an overseas visitor has been widely criticised as being impolite to the gods, the shrine itself, and the locals and their culture.

▼ Shrines are sacred places where worshippers should bow before entering the torii gate and then walk along one side of the path, as the middle section is the thoroughfare for the gods.

While there is a code of etiquette for proper behaviour at a shrine, there’s also a legal code of conduct that is enforceable by law. According to article 188 of the Penal Code, Desecrating Places of Worship; Interference with Religious Service, the following penalties apply:

“A person who openly desecrates a shrine, temple, cemetery or any other place of worship shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than six months or a fine of not more than 100,000 yen.

A person who interferes with a sermon, worship or a funeral service shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than 1 year or a fine of not more than 100,000 yen.”

While police aren’t currently investigating the matter, the Internet police have been out in full force, with the sister who performed the pull-ups being so harassed by angry messages online that she posted an apology on Instagram yesterday. In her apology video, which was transcribed in Japanese below the video, she says she didn’t mean to be rude and that she did the pull-ups without thinking. She also asked that people stop sending her messages and comments.

The offending video has since been deleted from the sisters’ Instagram account, but the damage remains as yet another instance of a “Nuisance Foreigner” has made news around Japan. Behaviour like this paints all foreign visitors in a bad light, and with real legal ramifications for acts that cross the line, it’s important to resist the urge to get that “only in Japan” shot, especially when it goes against the rules of society.

Source: FNN via Yahoo! News Japan
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert image: Pakutaso
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