Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has joined Japan's neighbours in opposing visits by his counterpart Junichiro Koizumi to a shrine to war dead, warning Tokyo it must show it admits its militarist past.

Koizumi indicated this week he plans to ignore the furious protests of nations including China and the Republic of Korea (ROK) and pay another visit to the Yasukuni shrine, which venerates 2.5 million Japanese war dead including seven men hanged for war crimes.

"From the point of view of many countries in the region who have experienced Japanese occupation, it raises many unhappy memories," Lee told Japanese journalists on Tuesday ahead of a visit to Tokyo next week.

"A visit to the shrine is interpreted by many people, I think including many in Singapore, as being a gesture of not entirely accepting responsibility and not accepting that Japan did wrong during the war and that these were war criminals and they should not be honoured," he said, as quoted by Kyodo News.

Japan's relations with China and South Korea are tense after Japan on April 5 approved a textbook written by avowed nationalists.

But Singapore and other Southeast Asian nations which suffered during Japan's invasions have generally been more pragmatic towards Tokyo after the war. Singapore two years ago became the first country to enter a free trade agreement with Japan.

Japan seized Singapore in 1942 in the biggest surrender ever of British forces.

Japan renamed the British colony Shonan and is estimated to have killed more than 50,000 civilians, many of them ethnic Chinese - out of a total population of 755,000 - during its three years of occupation.

Lee warned Koizumi that his visits to the Yasukuni shrine would have particularly disastrous consequences for relations with Japan's immediate neighbours.

"When a visit takes place, the temperature goes up all over the region, especially in China and especially in Korea," he said.

"That is regrettable because in fact we should be looking ahead, looking towards the future and how we can work together rather than be tied up with the past, but unless we come to terms with the past and acknowledge it, then it's very difficult to move ahead," he said.

Source: China Daily