Monday, March 24th 2025
Recent Spate of Video Games Set in Japan Cause Concern For Cultural Sites
With games like Ghost of Tsushima, and Assassin's Creed Shadows more recently, being set in various periods across historical Japan, the developers of the games upped the realism by including real-world locations in each of the games. While this has the added benefit of grounding the game and sharing some of Japan's cultural heritage with the gaming world, it has apparently also caused some controversy due to incidents involving vandalism at those very same culturally significant sites across Japan. According to Automaton, the Watazumi shrine featured in Ghost of Tsushima was forced to close its doors to tourists after an "unforgivable act of disrespect" was perpetrated at the site. No additional information about the site was provided by Japanese authorities, but it is assumed that some act of vandalism took place at the religious site.
[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of [Assassin's Creed Shadows] is now live]
This isn't the first time the shrine has banned visitors from its gates, but this time around, the shrine's officials report having had to contact the police on numerous occasions relating to vandalism and verbal and physical abuse of the management staff by visitors. The day after Ubisoft launched Assassin's Creed Shadows, the developer issued a patch removing destructible assets from religious shrines as a result of concern relating to vandalism of the religious sites. IGN reports that this concern came from none other than Japanese Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba, who issued a very serious statement clarifying that "Defacing a shrine is out of the question - it is an insult to the nation itself. When the Self-Defense Forces were deployed to Samawah, Iraq, we ensured they studied Islamic customs beforehand. Respecting the culture and religion of a country is fundamental, and we must make it clear that we will not simply accept acts that disregard them." He also suggested that these issues may require legal attention. The Assassin's Creed Shadows update removing destructible assets from shrines also made it so that civilians in and around sites of religious significance would not bleed when attacked by the player, reducing bloodshed in the shrines.
Sources:
Automaton, IGN
[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of [Assassin's Creed Shadows] is now live]
This isn't the first time the shrine has banned visitors from its gates, but this time around, the shrine's officials report having had to contact the police on numerous occasions relating to vandalism and verbal and physical abuse of the management staff by visitors. The day after Ubisoft launched Assassin's Creed Shadows, the developer issued a patch removing destructible assets from religious shrines as a result of concern relating to vandalism of the religious sites. IGN reports that this concern came from none other than Japanese Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba, who issued a very serious statement clarifying that "Defacing a shrine is out of the question - it is an insult to the nation itself. When the Self-Defense Forces were deployed to Samawah, Iraq, we ensured they studied Islamic customs beforehand. Respecting the culture and religion of a country is fundamental, and we must make it clear that we will not simply accept acts that disregard them." He also suggested that these issues may require legal attention. The Assassin's Creed Shadows update removing destructible assets from shrines also made it so that civilians in and around sites of religious significance would not bleed when attacked by the player, reducing bloodshed in the shrines.
29 Comments on Recent Spate of Video Games Set in Japan Cause Concern For Cultural Sites
At least we seem to have moved off the ridiculous "video games cause mass shooting events" dogshyte of the early 2000's.
People don't seem to understand the impact of media has over tourism. The first time I went to Fushimi Inari, the famous Kyoto shrine with the Torii tunel, I saw less than 5 people, at that time most Japanese didn't even know the place existed. Nowadays with all the Instagram/YouTube/TikTok fame and with the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, you're realy lucky if you see less than a hundred, and during the day at peek season it's more like a few thousands peoples at the same time....
I mean theres doing it right then theres doing it the Johnny Somali/Logan Paul and Ubisoft way.
Before any of that vandalism thing
Ubisoft didn't communicate with the site/shrine owners and basically stole their Intellectual property and profit from it.
And the shrine owners are actively discussing with Japan gov officials about suing Ubisoft.
They put Yasuke to have overnight relationship with a real princess, which was a direct ancestor of the current royal family.
And Ubisoft developer claimed they are 'Filling the gap of history' btw.
The Japanese congress had already started to discuss this and may consider this as an insult to the whole country.
This day one patch is just a bandage but it does not solve a mortal wound.
I do very much understand - and fully support- whichever nation any specific site belonged to if they didn't want to have it on one media or another for whichever cultural or religious reasons. A game or a movie could be deemed to be disrespectful in itself/its portrayal, but to blame it for another's actions? This needs much more than just x happened after y was released.
www.nbcnews.com/news/vermont-town-banning-influencers-tourists-visiting-fall-foliage-rcna117413
This has nothing to do with one particular game, and everything to do with idiots and people trying to flog a dead horse.
But for the media side of thing not recognising that any depiction of a place or landmark inside any form of media can have an effect over the popularity of such place and that with popularity the chance of bad behaviour raise is naive at best...
a video game is a video game though.
i don’t jump on turtles because I could in Mario.
side note, this is not a tpu appropriate topic
The attacks on various holy and culturally significant sites in real world weren't done as a copying of acts from a game. There are more tourists due to popularisation of sites, and this of course raises the possibility of acts of vandalism - but then you have to control everything - appearances in movies, other media like books, travel blogs etc...
Quite another debate is should the "disrespectful acts" towards holy and culturally significant sites be allowed in virtual world, fiction, movies, books? But this seems to me very extremist view - sure, have a culture that adhere to that. But forcing it globally? What will be next, no depiction of women without covering head to toe because otherwise you disrespect large portion of world's population? No depiction of pigs whatsoever? No blasphemy, of any religion? The list can be endless.
Begs the question why mods don't, y'know, just prevent obviously inflammatory news articles from being posted at all and avoid the problem entirely... but I have long given up on trying to fathom the logic behind editorial decisions made on this site.
1 - The site is not the forum. The news items posted are part of the front page. You don't need to join to read them - it's free news. The moderating team has no power to act on the front site, that includes the news posts. We can't edit them or delete them.
2 - The forum is where people join TPU (of their own free volition) to discuss tech or the posted news. This is where we come in. Our mandate is to moderate the community forum that is derived from the front site news posts. Sometimes we lock news posts, but we have no power to delete them. The news team are part of the paid staff team. The mods are part of the volunteer community.
3 - TL;DR - we're only here to moderate the community - not the news.
I hope that clears things up.