Japanese families want war criminal names dropped from Yasukuni Shrine

Some members of an influential group that represents families of Japanese war dead are urging managers of a controversial Tokyo shrine to remove the names of 14 convicted war criminals, an official said yesterday.

A chapter of the Japan War-Bereaved Families Association passed a resolution at its annual meeting on Monday to demand that the Yasukuni Shrine remove the names from among 2.5 million fallen Japanese honoured at the leafy site.

The changes were necessary "for the emperor and the empress, the prime minister and all Japanese people to visit the Yasukuni Shrine without any discomfort", said an official from the group's chapter in Fukuoka.

The call follows similar demands over the years, from both inside and outside Japan.

Nationalists, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, argue that Yasukuni is no different from other countries' war memorials. But the secret addition of 14 second world war leaders - including army general and prime minister Hideki Tojo - to the honour list in 1978 hindered a visit by the then-Emperor Hirohito, according to a memo by one of his aides. His son, Emperor Akihito, has never visited the shrine.

Japanese politicians' regular visits to the shrine have been controversial, prompting anger in China and South Korea, which suffered badly from Japanese wartime aggression.