An American tourist has been arrested for alleged vandalism at a historic shrine in Tokyo, Japan, a day after arriving in the country on vacation with his family.

Steve Lee Hayes, 65, allegedly carved five letters into the wooden pillar of a traditional Japanese gate, known as a torii gate, at the entrance to the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward around 11:15 a.m. on November 12, the Japan Times reported.

Surveillance footage from cameras at the Meiji Shrine caught him on camera, the newspaper reported.

He was arrested in a Tokyo hotel on November 13 on suspicions of property damage, a police spokesperson confirmed to NBC News, and he allegedly confessed to carving the names of his family members into the important cultural architecture.

Scratches are seen on a Torii gate at Meiji shrine in Tokyo on November 14, 2024. Photo by Yuichi Yamazaki/AFP via Getty Images

It was not immediately clear where in the United States he is from or if he had yet been released from custody, NBC News noted.

The Meiji Shrine, according to its website, is a Shinto site established in 1920 to commemorate Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken for taking “the initiative to make a foundation of modernized Japan” and away from feudal isolationism.

The shrine has expansive grounds with more than 170 acres of forest and garden areas, created from the donation of over 100,000 trees from across Japan.

Much of the shrine complex burned down in air raids during World War II, but it was restored in 1958. And in 2019, a museum on the shrine’s grounds opened.

Vandalizing a torii gate like the one at the Meiji Shrine is seen as deeply disrespectful in Japan. In Shinto, the nation’s indigenous religion, torii gates are seen as thresholds between the human world and sacred spaces, holding religious and cultural significance.

The Tokyo vandalism is just the latest incident amid a trend of bad behavior by tourists at cultural sites globally. In August, a British tourist was caught defacing the House of the Vestals in the ancient city of Pompeii and a man in Spain filmed himself pouring water over 6,000-year-old cave paintings.