18 hours ago
Drunk American Tourist Damages Kyoto Temple Tied to Samurai Legend
At around 6:20 a.m. on
June 24
, an intoxicated American tourist entered a centuries-old Zen temple in Kyoto and broke part of it. The man, whose name has not been released, wandered into Shoden Eigen-in, a subtemple of Kenninji in Higashiyama ward. Rather than using the main entrance, he entered through a kitchen door on the south side. He stumbled through the gardens. Then, for reasons known only to himself, he attempted to climb a wooden railing enclosing the main hall.
That railing, along with the hall itself, was designated as a Kyoto Prefectural Cultural Heritage Site in 2015. The structure is fragile, historically significant and irreplaceable. The damage was immediate. The wood split and scraped under his weight. A nearby wooden door was also broken.
The temple called the police, but didn't file a damage report.
The man returned later that morning, sober. Through a translation app, he told the chief priest: 'This was the biggest mistake of my life. I'm truly sorry.' When asked why he did it, his answer was simple. 'I just wanted to see the temple.'
List of Contents:
The Legacy of Shoden Eigen-in
A Familiar Pattern in Kyoto
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The Legacy of Shoden Eigen-in
Shoden Eigen-in isn't just any temple. It's one of the quieter subtemples of Kenninji, Kyoto's oldest Zen training monastery, founded in
1202
. While Kenninji's dragon murals and manicured grounds attract thousands, Eigen-in sits in a more subdued corner, slightly hidden and slightly worn — and usually closed to the public, save for rare seasonal openings. It's a place most visitors will never step inside, let alone touch.
The temple is closely tied to
Oda Urakusai,
also known as Oda Nagamasu — a warlord-turned-tea-master and the younger brother of Oda Nobunaga, one of the three great unifiers of Japan. Urakusai survived the fall of the Oda clan, lived through the violent rise of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and eventually renounced politics for aesthetics. He became a student of Sen no Rikyu, the most influential figure in the history of the tea ceremony.
Urakusai brought with him a taste for restraint, imperfection, and wabi-sabi — ideas that would come to define Japanese high culture. His legacy survives not only in ceramics and tearooms but in quiet places like Shoden Eigen-in, a temple where there are no velvet ropes or security guards.
A Familiar Pattern in Kyoto
This incident is hardly the first time a historic site in Japan has suffered from the side effects of tourism. In
2024
, authorities moved to restrict access to Kyoto's geisha districts after repeated cases of tourist harassment.
The city, which welcomed a record high of
10.88 million foreign visitors in 2024,
walks a fine line between preservation and profit. Its temples are cultural touchstones, but also functioning religious spaces. And while tourism fuels the economy, it also frays the very fabric that visitors claim to cherish.
Chief priest Keinin Magami, 48, told reporters he accepted the man's apology. There was no permanent damage to the residence attached to the temple. The railing will likely be repaired with traditional methods, quietly, without fuss.
Within an hour of the story breaking, though, several people took to X to vent their anger. 'If the temple doesn't ask for repair costs, things like this will just keep happening!' one user
said
.
This isn't just about one drunk man and a railing, though. It's about a city buckling under the weight of its own myth. A place where history lives in wood and paper, and yet is expected to withstand the full force of global foot traffic, camera flashes and clueless entitlement.
Shoden Eigen-in will mend the damage. The priest will move on. The tourist will fly home. But there will be more issues in the future.
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