Another day, yet another case of Ubisoft finding themselves in hot water over Assassin’s Creed Shadows, this time as the caretakers of a specific Japanese Shinto shrine have announced that they will be taking “appropriate action” against the developer for allowing players to freely destroy a digital recreation of the historical religious site.
Located in Japan’s Hyogo prefecture near Himeji Castle, the Itatehyozu-jinja Shrine, also known as the Harima-no-Kuni Sosha, is one of the region’s most important Shinto-related locations, having initially been established as the sole residence of the local God Of Matchmaking/Nation-Building (Hyouzu-no-Ohkami) and God of Planting Trees/Achieving Victory And Happiness (Itate-no-Ohkami) in 564 before later enshrining all of the region’s 174 deities in 1181.
Standing undisturbed for nearly 1300 years, World War 2 would sadly see the shrine significant damage to its buildings as a result of America’s June 22nd-July 3rd, 1945 bombing of Himeji, the offensive campaign undertaken in service of disrupting the numerous Japanese rail lines that ran through the city.
And though the shrine would lay in dismay for a short while following the end of the war, it would eventually be rebuilt in 1953, with many considering its revival as a symbol of Japan’s post-1952 rebirth as both a sovereign nation and a booming economic titan.
(Editor’s Note: Dear Japanese and Japan-knowledgeable readers, I apologize if any of the above information is incorrect. At current, there exists practically no English writings regarding the shrine’s history, and as such I the above information was gleaned from machine translations, as provided by DeepL, of the Itatehyozu-jinja’s official website. In the case of any errors, please feel free to send a direct message to our official Twitter account.)
Given it’s existence in both the physical location and time period as Shadows, the appearance of the Shrine in-game, came as no surprise when it made an appearance in a preview build played by numerous video YouTubers, influencers, and journalists at a January preview event.
However, what did come as a surprise was the fact that, as originally brought to public attention by YouTuber Skatha, the holy site could be completely demolished by the player (though Skatha demonstrated the shrine’s destructibility using Yasuke, given that the game allows players to switch to Naoe at nearly any time, it is currently presume that the destruction can be caused by either character).
Notably, this instance of player freedom came as a particular shock to the shrine’s aforementioned caretakers, who in response to being asked about the situation by Japanese news outlet Sankei Shimbun declared, “We will take appropriate action”.
Further, when pressed as to whether or not they had ever been contacted by Ubisoft regarding the site’s location in the game, they recalled, “No. If there had been, we would have refused.”
At present, the shrine has not yet made public just what “action” they plan to take against Ubisoft and Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
However, when asked by Sankei Shimbun if they might be seeking the site’s removal from the game, a representative from the Jinja Honchō – otherwise known as the Association of Shinto Shrines, the religious organization currently responsible for overseeing the administration of the 80,000 such locations found throughout Japan – denied that such plans were currently on the table.
