"inuman;c-17707332" wrote:
So, Japanese person here. I’ll share my question around the topic that s1mszzang and simsimsimsimmer were talking a while ago in this thread.
My question is, is that actually a shinto shrine? Did someone from the team confirm it?
I’m asking because it doesn’t look like a shinto shrine to me. It looks more like Hokora (祠), a small praying place that is frequently found by the roadside or in the woods or mountains. I think most people in Japan see them as Buddhism thing, because those small spaces often has the stature of Jizou Bosatsu (地蔵菩薩), the Buddhism god who saves the underdogs and children. Or just the animism gods of the nature, like gods of mountains and such.
You can find a Wikipedia page about Hokora, and one of the photos there has 卍 which is the Buddhism simbol of auspicious omens: https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E7%A5%A0&oldid=73952530
The phasing of “worship shrine” in their blog was a big mistake. Worship is a strong word, sounds very religious. I understand it would increase tensions among Korean users who's unfamiliar with today's Japanese religion if that term was appeared in the game. But, as I said, I can't find any confirmed information that it's actually a shinto shrine.
Even though it is, there have been the thousands of popular shows/movies/animes where the characters go to shinto shrines and pray. I've never heard of accusation against them which seem to be popular among Koreans too. Needless to say, we have tons of tourists from Korea for famous shinto shrines in real life.
That's the thing that people were overreacting to a 3-second clip without any context, no one knew if they were Shinto, Hokora or Buddhist shrines. So the removal of the interaction (and now the shrine itself) has been baffling to many players.
