TOKYO, Aug 15 (Bernama-Kyodo) -- Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on Saturday sent a ritual offering to the controversial Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, while the country's defence chief Shinjiro Koizumi visited the site as Japan marks the 81st anniversary of the end of World War II, Kyodo News reported.
Sources have said Takaichi, a conservative, is likely to refrain from visiting the war-linked shrine on the war anniversary.
The shrine honours Japanese leaders convicted as war criminals. Visits by Japanese prime ministers and lawmakers have drawn sharp rebukes from China and South Korea, which both suffered under Japan's wartime aggression.
Takaichi, as president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, paid for the offering out of her own pocket, according to a senior party executive.
Koizumi became the first sitting defence minister confirmed to have visited the Shinto shrine on the anniversary since Minoru Kihara, who went on Aug 15, 2024. Kihara is now chief Cabinet secretary in Takaichi's government.
Hitoshi Kikawada, another Cabinet member, also visited the shrine.
Kikawada serves as state minister in charge of issues related to the Northern Territories off Japan's Hokkaido -- islands at the centre of a territorial row with Russia. Tokyo maintains the former Soviet Union illegally seized the islands after the war.
Before taking office last October, Takaichi visited the shrine during its seasonal festivals and on the Aug 15 war anniversary. She has refrained from going to the shrine since becoming prime minister.
Japan has spent the decades since the end of the war committing itself to peace under its war-renouncing Constitution. In what it has described as an increasingly severe security environment, the country has been boosting its defence capabilities and spending.
Senior executives of the conservative LDP -- Secretary General Shunichi Suzuki, Haruko Arimura, head of its General Council, and Yasutoshi Nishimura, head of its Election Strategy Committee -- also visited.
Yasukuni enshrined 14 wartime leaders as deities in 1978, most of whom were convicted as Class-A war criminals. They include Gen. Hideki Tojo, a wartime prime minister who was executed in 1948 for crimes against peace.
Japan occupied a wide area of China by the end of the war and colonised the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
-- BERNAMA-KYODO