‘Please respect’ the dead by not hunting Pokemon: Singapore’s Japanese Cemetery Park

A notice put up at the Japanese Cemetery Park in Hougang, with Pokemon’s ghost-type characters. Images: @Azrashazeaa/Instagram, Niantic
A notice put up at the Japanese Cemetery Park in Hougang, with Pokemon’s ghost-type characters. Images: @Azrashazeaa/Instagram, Niantic

While Japan may be the ancestral home of all Pokemon, that doesn’t mean they are to be hunted in its cemeteries. 

The Japanese Cemetery Park in Hougang has a notice by The Japanese Association of Singapore discouraging players of augmented reality game Pokemon Go from scouring the place in pursuit of their prey. The notice was posted today to a page that compiles all public notices, mostly quirky, around the city. 

“The Japanese Cemetery Park is a site for those who rest in peace. Please respect them and do not enter the ground for Pokemon Go,” the notice read, emphasizing the game in red with an underline.

If that wasn’t clear enough, they had a big circle with a cross over the words: “No! Pokemon Go.”

The cemetery is a 30,000sqm park that contains close to 1,000 graves of Japanese civilians and soldiers from the early 20th century, as well as the ashes of Japanese soldiers, marines and airmen killed during World War II, and the remains of Japanese war criminals executed at Changi Prison. 

It was built in 1891 and was turned into a memorial park in 1987.

Since the game launched in 2016, game developers have removed landmarks around the world, such as Hiroshima’s atomic bomb memorial park and Washington’s U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, as Pokestops.

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