A Japanese celebrity plastic surgeon has put a bounty on the head of a Chinese vlogger who urinated and spray-painted "toilet" at Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni Shrine.
Dr Katsuya Takasu, a nationalist who has in the past called the Nanjing massacre and Auschwitz "fabrications", offered to pay 10 million yen ($96,605) for the capture of the man whose vandalism has sparked outrage in Japan.
"A country that tolerates blasphemy against the warriors who died defending the country is not an independent country," Dr Takasu said in Japanese in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
"If they are caught, I would like them to be punished accordingly."
Yasukuni Shrine honours about 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including convicted war criminals.
Victims of Japanese aggression during the first half of the 20th century, especially China and the Koreas, see it as a symbol of Japanese militarism.
In a video posted to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu on Saturday, a man who identified himself as "Iron Head" criticised the discharge of treated radioactive wastewater from the f*ckushima nuclear power plant into the ocean.
He later can be seen apparently urinating on a pillar at the shrine and using spray paint to write "toilet" in English.
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Yasukuni Shrine, in a statement emailed to the Associated Press, said the graffiti was "extremely regrettable" and called it "an act of degrading the dignity of the shrine".
Japanese media have reported that Tokyo police are investigating at least two suspects, the man who appeared in the video and another who shot it.
Who is 'Iron Head'?
According to Chinese social media, the man who identified himself as "Iron Head" has been publishing videos for about a year and is best known for videos accusing stall owners of dodgy sales practices.
However, his videos were reportedly recently erased from China's internet after he documented his experiences soliciting sex.
In a video posted since the incident, he claimed to have returned to China.
He told a Japanese television journalist who tracked him down in Hangzhou that there was no reason for him to reflect on his behaviour.
The vandalism has generally received a favourable response on social media in China, though many are cynical of his motives.
"We don’t advocate this behaviour, but since the target is Yasukuni, that's a different matter," said one netizen on Weibo.
"We should just see it as a funny story but if regarding him as a national hero, it's such an insult to the word 'hero'. He is just taking advantage of the internet to be famous, no matter by what way. But I need to say Yasukuni Shrine will have its own retribution," said another.
The discharge of treated water from f*ckushima has been opposed by fishing groups and neighbouring countries, especially China.
Beijing imposed a ban on all imports of Japanese seafood immediately after the release began in August. The ban has particularly affected Japanese scallop growers and exporters to China.
A 'holy place' for Japan's political right
Jeffrey Hall, a lecturer in politics at Kanda University of International Studies, said the Japanese general public's view of Yasukuni Shrine was "mixed".
He said the political left saw the shrine as a symbol of Japan's wars of aggression and lack of religious liberty during the war years and criticised its managers for promoting revisionist views.
"The shrine's museum depicts most of the wars Japan fought as wars of self-defence, which is quite different from the mainstream view that World War II was a war of aggression," he said.
He said Japanese on the political right treated the shrine as a "holy place".
"Every year on August 15th, thousands of conservative Japanese people come to offer prayers on the anniversary of the end of the war," he said.
"To them it is a special religious place where one goes to pray for the souls of every soldier who died to defend Japan and their families.
"The Chinese vandal's actions caused a lot of outrage among Japan's internet right, which shared various demands that he be caught and punished."
Dr Hall said many Japanese were not focused on the politics surrounding the shrine and did not have strong feelings about it.
"Japan's education system does not go into much detail about what the shrine meant historically and what political views it represents today," he said.
"However, even Japanese who don't have strong political views about the war would probably react negatively to a foreign person vandalising a Shinto Shrine."
'An attention-seeking celebrity'
Dr Hall described Dr Takasu, the plastic surgeon who offered to pay the bounty, as "an attention-seeking celebrity with extreme right-wing views" and said the offer to pay a bounty was "very on brand".
"In the past he has made various statements denying Japanese war atrocities, glorifying Japan's wartime leadership, and denying the Holocaust," Dr Hall said.
In 2017 he was criticised by Jewish groups for earlier social media posts in which he claimed the Nanjing massacre and Auschwitz were "fabrications".
Dr Takasu told Reuters at the time the posts had been intentionally misunderstood but added that he thought the number of people killed in the Holocaust and the Nanjing massacre had been exaggerated.
Dr Hall said Dr Takasu's plastic surgerybusiness and bizarre TV commercials had made him a household name in Japan and given him a huge social media following.
"He uses his social media platform to espouse his right-wing nationalist views," he said.
"Offering a bounty is very on brand for him, and it's likely he was aware the culprit would flee Japan before being caught.
"A cynical person might regard his bounty offer as a form of nationalistic virtue-signalling."
Dr Hall said Dr Takasu often undertook public acts to signal how committed he was to his right wing nationalist beliefs.
"He often shares social media posts of him visiting the graves of seven war criminals at Mount Sangane, which is far more controversial than Yasukuni because it is specifically devoted to executed war leaders rather than all of Japan's war dead," he said.
ABC/wires
