Hackles rose also at the unveiling earlier this month of Japan's biggest warship since the end of the war. The Izumo, a flat-top destroyer, shares the same name as a warship in the Imperial Navy destroyed in an American attack in 1945.
"We call upon the Japanese side to honor their commitment to admit and reflect upon their history of invasion, act with care on relevant questions, and through concrete actions, win the trust of the people of Asian victim nations and international society," the official Xinhua News Agency quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei as saying.
In Seoul, South Korea, women who had been forced to work in wartime brothels of the Japanese army, and their supporters, rallied outside the Japanese Embassy, demanding apologies and compensation.
A group of four South Korean lawmakers traveled to Japan, planning to visit Yasukuni in protest Thursday. Police kept them away to prevent possible trouble with rightists in the vicinity. They instead held a brief protest a few blocks from the shrine.
Despite its apparent tranquility, Yasukuni remains a focus of nationalist pride and is closely associated with the monarchy, although royal family members have rarely visited. Akihito visited the shrine in 1975. He became emperor in 1989.
Yasukuni was created in 1869 to honor 3,588 loyalists who died the year before, when imperial forces overthrew centuries of feudal rule. Standing sentry is the bronze statue of the founder of Japan's modern army.
Its museum recounts in unapologetic detail Japan's military exploits over the past 150 years, including its occupation of much of Asia in the early 20th century.
The outbreak of war in East Asia in the late 1930s is attributed to attacks by Chinese partisans. Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor came after Tokyo concluded war was inevitable.
A very short display on the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, when the Japanese army invaded the city then called Nanking, raping, torturing and murdering tens of thousands of Chinese, mentions none of those atrocities. It instead emphasizes that Japanese troops were ordered to observe "strict military discipline" or be severely punished, and shows a picture of what it says are local residents "joyously welcoming the Imperial Troops."
Estimates on the number of dead in Nanking range widely, from 20,000 by right-wing Japanese historians to 300,000 by Chinese scholars.
Many Christian, Buddhist and civic groups also view visits to Yasukuni as a violation of the postwar Japanese constitution, which mandates the separation of church and state and limits the role of the emperor to that of a symbolic figurehead.
Even today, the spirits of soldiers who die in the line of duty are enshrined in Yasukuni's "Symbolic Registry of Souls," whether they accept Shintoism or not.
