Candlelight protest urges Japan PM not to visit shrine

TOKYO, Aug 11 (Reuters) Protesters marched through central Tokyo today carrying candles and urging Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi not to visit a war shrine seen by many in Asia as a symbol of the country's past militarism.

Speculation is rife that Koizumi will visit Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where wartime leaders convicted as war criminals are honoured along with Japan's 2.5 million war dead, on the emotive August 15 anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War Two.

The group of about 200 protesters, some from Taiwan and South Korea whose relatives died fighting for Japan's imperial forces and are honoured at Yasukuni, walked through the government district carrying candles and shouting ''Koizumi don't go!'' Some carried signs reading ''No War'' and ''No Yasukuni.'' Right-wing protesters staged a noisy counter-demonstration, but police kept the two groups apart.

During an afternoon protest by the same group, South Korean member of parliament Kim Hee-sun said that Yasukuni was an affront to human rights.

''To visit the Yasukuni shrine is to affirm Japan's war of aggression and colonial rule; that's why neighbouring Asian nations oppose it,'' she said.

The group opposes both Koizumi's visit and the honouring at Yasukuni of soldiers from Taiwan and Korea, Japanese colonies before Tokyo's 1945 surrender, without their relatives' permission.

Koizumi promised during his successful campaign to become ruling party chief in 2001 that he would visit Yasukuni on August 15, a pledge widely seen as intended to gain political support from a powerful association of relatives of war dead.

He has visited Yasukuni every year since, but avoided the anniversary in an apparent effort to moderate Asian outrage.

The names of about 27,800 people from Taiwan and more than 21,000 from the two Koreas are recorded at Yasukuni, according to officials at the Shinto shrine.

Many of their relatives have filed lawsuits demanding that the names be removed from lists of those honoured at the shrine, as have some Japanese Christians.

REUTERS DKB RS1813