Japan shrine seeks 'understanding'

The shrine honours Japan's recent war dead

A controversial Tokyo war shrine has started offering brochures in Chinese and Korean, to increase visitors' "understanding", shrine officials said.

Officials said the brochure was a response to a recent increase in foreign visitors to the shrine.

But the brochure's wording may cause as much anger as understanding, correspondents say.

The shrine is a key source of tension between Japan and its neighbours, who say it honours Japan's militarist past.

Yasukuni is dedicated to the souls of Japan's 2.5 million war dead, including 14 convicted class A war criminals who were tried by the Allies after World War II.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the shrine have led to diplomatic rows with South Korea and China, which were often brutally occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army until the end of WWII.

"There is a noticeable increase in the number of worshippers and visitors from China, including Taiwan, and from South Korea. We created this pamphlet... to help them understand Yasukuni Shrine better," a statement from the shrine said.

The brochure says Yasukuni enshrines those who "were cruelly and unjustly tried as war criminals by a sham-like tribunal of the Allied Forces".

It describes war as "sorrowful", but says that "to maintain the independence and peace of the nation and for the prosperity of all of Asia, Japan was forced into conflict".

A reference to World War II as the "Greater East Asian War", Japan's war-time terminology, is also likely to upset Asian nations.