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TOKYO: Japan clandestinely asked a Shinto shrine to honour war criminals, showing the government was closely involved in what has turned into a major diplomatic row, reports said on Thursday.
The Yasukuni shrine venerates 2.5 million Japanese war dead including World War II leaders condemned by US-led allied powers as war criminals. It has been seen abroad and by many at home as a symbol of Japan's militarist past.
US occupation forces stripped the shrine of its official status after World War II and Japanese leaders have since stressed the site's private nature.
But documents released by the National Diet Library and reported on Thursday by major newspapers suggest the government was closely involved in the decision to include war criminals at the shrine.
A document dated January 1969 shows the shrine consulted the government on plans to list the names of top, or Class-A, war criminals, "without making it public", the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said.
The Yasukuni shrine discreetly added the names of 14 Class-A war criminals, who include hanged wartime premier Hideki Tojo, in October 1978.
Another document dated April 1958 said the welfare ministry urged the shrine to list the names of hundreds of lower-ranking class-B and class-C war criminals.
"How about enshrining them in a way that would be hard to discover?" a document quoted an unnamed official as saying, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun.
But the government denied official pressure.
"It's the shrine's decision whom to include and whom not to include in the list for enshrinement," chief government spokesman Yasuhisa Shiozaki said.
"The final decision is made by the shrine and the government did not force it to do anything," he told reporters.
Former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi repeatedly visited the shrine, infuriating China and South Korea which remain resentful over Japanese imperialism. The two countries refused summits with Koizumi.
Since succeeding Koizumi in September, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is not known to have visited the shrine, leading to a resumption of summits with Beijing and Seoul.
Abe was in the past a strong supporter of the shrine but since taking office has chosen "strategic ambiguity" on whether he will go.
The Liberal Democratic Party has been in power continuously for all but 10 months since 1955.
- AFP/so
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