A serving police officer has been identified as a suspect in a case where a statue of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a landmark of a shopping district in Nagoya, Japan, was found with its neck broken.
According to NHK on the 25th, evidence indicates that two people, including a male police officer with the Ehime Prefectural Police, were involved in the statue vandalism that occurred on Aug. 19. The officer, who was on a business trip to Aichi Prefecture at the time, was found to have been drunk on the night of Aug. 19 and to have grabbed the statue's head with both hands, twisted it, and broken its neck.
In the early morning of the 23rd of the same month, police also obtained additional footage of a man living in Nagoya kicking the statue's head and knocking it off. Police plan to refer both to prosecutors on property damage charges, and the Ehime Prefectural Police Headquarters Office of the Inspector General said it would respond appropriately once the facts are confirmed.
The damaged Hideyoshi statue, made of reinforced plastic, was donated in 2013 by self-employed worker Tokita Kazuhiro to help revitalize the area. In an interview, Tokita said, "The investigation has progressed and I can breathe a sigh of relief," and added, "This is something that could undermine trust in the police as a whole, and I think it should never happen."
At the intersection at the entrance to the shopping district, statues of Japan's "three heroes of the Sengoku period," including Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu, stand alongside Hideyoshi. But the statues have long suffered from habitual vandalism. Six years ago, Nobunaga's statue had an arm torn off, and three years ago, Ieyasu's statue was found toppled over, among other incidents.