TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, whose annual visits to a Shinto shrine for war dead have angered China and South Korea, paid tribute at Japan's nondenominational tomb of the unknown soldiers yesterday.

Koizumi joined other lawmakers, members of the Imperial Family and foreign diplomats as the ashes of 398 soldiers were added to the remains of some 350,000 unidentified Japanese soldiers who died in World War II.

Chidorigafuchi, an austere memorial near the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, honours Japan's unknown war dead whose remains are symbolically contained in a gold-plated urn inside a wooden coffin housed in a hexagonal pavilion.

It stands in sharp contrast to the nearby Yasukuni shrine, dedicated to Japan's war dead but seen by Beijing and Seoul as a symbol of its wartime militarism as convicted war criminals are also honoured there.

Koizumi, who has visited Yasukuni each year since taking office in 2001 and last did so in October 2005, says he goes there to pray for peace, not to glorify war.

But some Japanese have suggested prime ministers could honour the war dead without upsetting Asian neighbours who suffered under Japan's wartime actions by paying their respects at Chidorigafuchi rather than Yasukuni.

When Koizumi attended the annual ceremony at Chidorigafuchi last May, the visit did not draw complaints from Asian countries.

"I think deeply of the war dead and express my condolences," Health Minister Jiro Kawasaki said in a speech read at Chidorigafuchi by his deputy.

"In the meantime, I pledge to pass on to the next generation many lessons learned from the past war and make efforts in order to ensure eternal peace."

Koizumi did not speak but placed a chrysanthemum on a table set before the memorial's coffin to music from a band of Imperial Palace guards.

Chidorigafuchi crematory, established in 1959 after Japan had renounced war, is a completely secular memorial holding the remains of nearly 350,000 Japanese soldiers. The government has identified only 611 of them.

Critics have suggested that Japan make Chidorigafuchi into the country's official war memorial excluding war criminals so leaders can pay their respects for the war dead without being seen as glorifying the militarist past.

But many Japanese oppose the move, and the search for a Yasukuni alternative has stalled. The government has yet to give a clear indication whether such a facility will be set up.

Source: China Daily