You sure those weren't actually Manji? They mark where temples are.
Any inhabitant of the temples will explain how german visitors would (infrequently) vandalize the temples. Not the intentional decoration (which is obvious) but the crude carvings into random wooden walls. I'm a little surprised that you can no longer find images of these carving after a few minutes of searching on the web. That's unfortunate, but I stand by my observations.