Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi prayed at a Tokyo shrine honoring the country's war dead on Monday, defying critics who say the visits glorify militarism and risking a further deterioration in relations with China and South Korea.
The visit was Koizumi's fifth to the Yasukuni Shrine since becoming prime minister in April 2001, and came despite a recent court decision that ruled the visits violate Japan's constitutional division of religion and the state.
Koizumi last went to Yasukuni in January 2004, triggering protests by Beijing and Seoul and compounding tensions between Tokyo and its neighbors. Those tensions peaked in April with anti-Japanese riots in several Chinese cities.
The international implications of the visit were immediately apparent. South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon summoned Japanese Ambassador Shotaro Oshima to protest shortly after the visit, expressing Seoul's "deep regrets."
"It's not an exaggeration to say that Prime Minister Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni Shrine has been the biggest stumbling block that has strained South Korea-Japan relations," Ban told Oshima. "Our government has repeatedly requested that he not visit the shrine, which enshrines war criminals who inflicted indescribable suffering and pain in the past."
The Japanese Embassy in Beijing issued a warning urging Japanese citizens to be cautious, the Foreign Ministry said.
Japan's 2.5 million war dead are worshipped as deities at Yasukuni, a shrine belonging to Japan's native Shinto religion. They include executed war criminals from World War II, such as wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. The shrine also runs a museum that attempts to justify Japan's wartime aggression.
In what could be a nod to the constitutional dispute, however, Koizumi made the visit in a business suit rather than traditional Japanese dress, and he only stood in silence and bowed at the entrance to the shrine, throwing coins into a donation box, rather than entering the inner chamber as he has done in the past.
Speculation has been high all year that Koizumi would visit Yasukuni, but he had not said whether he would go until an announcement early Monday. The visits are popular among conservatives and the families of soldiers who died in World War II.
"If my children were dead and enshrined here, I would want him to make a visit. So I understand the prime minister's feelings," said Kyoko Matsuura, a housewife in her 40s who was in a crowd at the shrine. "I think he comes here with a commitment not to repeat a war."
Public opinion, however, is deeply split over the visits. Nippon Television conducted a poll over the weekend showing that 47.6 percent of respondents supported the visits, while 45.5 percent were opposed. NTV surveyed 479 people from Friday to Sunday, and provided no margin of error.
Koizumi's visit invited mixed reaction from within his ruling coalition.
"We find (the visit) regrettable," said Takenori Kanzaki, head of the ruling Liberal Democrats' coalition partner, New Komei Party. "I think he should explain to Asian countries why he made the visit today."
Koizumi's move defied a recent ruling by the Osaka High Court that the visits violated the constitutional division between religion and the state. Koizumi suggests the visits are personal, but as in past occasions, he went to Yasukuni on Monday in an official car, accompanied by his aides.
But several other rulings have avoided ruling on the constitutionality of the visits.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Monday's visit was not in Koizumi's official capacity, but suggested the government might expect protests from neighboring nations.
"(Koizumi) did not visit the shrine as an official duty of the prime minister," Hosoda said.
"There may be various diplomatic actions that may develop later on but I cannot predict what exactly may happen," he said.
Yasukuni officials said a group of more than 100 national lawmakers were scheduled to visit the shrine Tuesday morning.
The visits have enraged Japanese neighbors and worsened relations with South Korea and China, which suffered from Tokyo's conquest of East Asia in the first half of the 20th century.
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