84 Japanese lawmakers visit Yasukuni Shrine

More than 80 Japanese lawmakers paid visits to the Yasukuni Shrine on Wednesday morning, Kyodo News said.

Among the 84 visitors to the shrine, where a three-day annual autumn festival is being staged, 75 were from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the report said.

The Tokyo-based Yasukuni Shrine honors 14 Japanese class-A war criminals from World War II along with more than 2 million war dead.

In the past five years, former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine have been denounced by countries which suffered from Japan's brutal aggression before and during World War II.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said the Japanese government was working on building a future-oriented relationship with China and South Korea as agreed at the summits when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the two countries earlier this month.

Source: Xinhua