Assassin’s Creed Shadows being set in Japan has led to a surprising amount of controversy. Having a historically accurate samurai stirred up a huge amount of anti-woke backlash while anger at the inaccuracies in Ubisoft’s depiction of feudal Japan forced it to clarify that the game is historical fiction, with a particular emphasis on the fiction.

It has had to apologise for accidentally using a historical reenactment group’s flag in its art. Collectible figure maker PureArts even had to remove a figure from sale because it depicted a broken torii gate, which was likely based on one that’s a monument to the lives lost when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki in World War 2.

The Prime Minister Of Japan Has Commented

This controversy has now escalated to Japan’s Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba. According to IGN, during an official government conference meeting, Japanese politician Hiroyuki Kada said, “I fear that allowing players to attack and destroy real-world locations in the game without permission could encourage similar behavior in real life. Shrine officials and local residents are also worried about this. Of course, freedom of expression must be respected, but acts that demean local cultures should be avoided.”

This is in reference to footage of a player defacing the Itate Hyozu shrine in Shadows. The shrine is in Kada’s constituency. He also raised the point that Ubisoft didn’t ask for permission, but I fail to see why it would have had to.

Prime Minister Ishiba replied, “Defacing a shrine is out of the question – it is an insult to the nation itself… 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.”

Some have interpreted this as the Prime Minister saying that defacing shrines in the game shouldn’t be allowed, which isn’t the case – that much is clear if you have any sort of reading comprehension, which unfortunately, many do not. He was referring to the potential of copycat acts and denouncing theoretical crimes, not the game itself.

Video Games Don’t Make People Violent

The actual problem here is that the Japanese government seems to believe that a video game will inspire real people to deface shrines, which it will not. It’s the same type of hand wringing that led an American politician to suggest banning Grand Theft Auto and other violent video games, suggesting that it would lead to an increase in crime if left unchecked. The vast majority of people who play video games will never commit a violent crime in their lives. Likewise, the vast majority of people who play video games are not going to enter a shrine with a katana and start slashing things up.

Japan’s real issue – and this was suggested in how Kada framed this question as part of the issue of “over tourism” – is that tourists in this country act like fools. There is some legitimacy to the concern that people will go to Japan and act inappropriately, because people already do.

A Chilean tourist was flamed online for doing pullups on a torii gate. Streamer and notorious troll Johnny Somali harassed a female Twitch streamer and was convicted in Japanese court on a separate charge of “conspiracy of obstruction of business”. An American tourist scratched letters into Meiji Jingu, one of Tokyo’s most famous shrines. And most infamously, Logan Paul filmed a dead body in Aokigahara Forest.

Regardless of what was actually said, Ubisoft seems to have preemptively patched out certain things to placate detractors. Automaton reported that a day one patch will make tables and shelving in shrines indestructible, and non-essential portrayals of bloodshed in shrines and temples will be reduced. Unarmed NPCs won’t bleed when attacked, either. It’s unclear if this is a Japan-specific patch or a global one.

It feels like Ubisoft is trying to calm tensions by doing all this, and I can kind of see why. Nobody really wants to get into a tussle with a government when it could just take that stuff out of the game. I don’t even care if I can kill NPCs or not, I’m not a freak. But this all seems overblown.

Assassin’s Creed 2 had you beating up the Pope and assassinating people in historical cathedrals, and nobody kicked up a fuss about that. The problem isn’t the game, it’s that tourists are awful. Why is Ubisoft getting the short stick here?