Hirohito shunned shrine over war criminals-report

TOKYO, July 20 (Reuters) Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japanese soldiers fought in World War Two, stopped visiting a shrine for war dead because he was displeased that wartime leaders convicted as war criminals were honoured there, media reported today, citing a memo by a former courtier.

Japan's ties with China and South Korea have chilled since Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took office in 2001 and began visiting Yasukuni Shrine, where World War Two leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal are honoured along with the nation's 2.5 million war dead.

The shrine is seen by critics at home and abroad as a symbol of Japan's past militarism. Speculation is simmering that Koizumi -- who says he goes to pray for peace -- may pay his respects there this year on Aug. 15, the emotive anniversary of Japan's surrender in 1945.

Historians had suggested that the late Hirohito, who visited Yasukuni eight times after the war, the last time in 1975, stopped going because of the shrine's decision in 1978 to honour the war criminals. But the memo provides the first concrete proof, said the Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper.

The financial daily was the first to report the story, which was later splashed across other papers' front pages as well.

''At some point, Class-A criminals became enshrined,'' the newspaper quoted Hirohito as saying, according to a 1988 memo by former Imperial Household Agency Grand Steward Tomohiko Tomita.

''That's why I have not visited the shrine since. This is my heart.'' An Imperial Household Agency spokesman declined to comment on the report, saying it was about a private memo.

POLITICAL FOCAL POINT Wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo and 13 other leaders convicted as ''Class A'' war criminals by an Allied tribunal in 1948 were secretly elevated to the status of gods by the shrine in a solemn Shinto ceremony in 1978.

News of the ceremony ignited a firestorm of controversy in Japan when it broke six months later.

Hirohito's son and heir, Emperor Akihito, has not visited the shrine since ascending the throne in 1989.

Some Japanese politicians have suggested that Class-A war criminals be removed from the list of those honoured at Yasukuni, or that Japan should build a secular memorial where leaders could go without offending Asian neighbours.

Politicians critical of Koizumi's Yasukuni visits quickly seized on the report of Hirohito's views to bolster their stance, while proponents of the premier's pilgrimages voiced objections to what they called political manipulation of the emperor.

Yasukuni has become a focal point in the race to succeed Koizumi as prime minister when he steps down in September.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, the frontrunner in the race, has backed Koizumi's visits but has not said whether he would make similar pilgrimages if elected. Potential rival Yasuo Fukuda advocates a new memorial for the war dead.

Built in 1869 by the Emperor Meiji, Yasukuni became a symbol of state Shintoism under which the sovereign was revered as a god in whose name the war was waged.

It was supported by the state until the end of 1945.

Shrine authorities have never accepted the results of the Allied war tribunal as valid and consider the wartime leaders honoured there to be ''Showa martyrs''.

Hirohito's own responsibility for the war has never been fully pursued in Japan, scholars say, largely due to a decision by US Occupation authorities to keep him on the throne and turn the emperor into a symbol of a newly democratic Japan.

REUTERS MQA ND1514