Japan war shrine to 'soften' China exhibits -paper

TOKYO, Dec 20 (Reuters) The Japanese war shrine at the centre of a long-running dispute between Tokyo and Beijing has decided to ''soften'' references to China in a war museum on its premises, a Japanese newspaper reported today.

Relations between Japan and China deteriorated to their coldest in decades under former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, partly because of his annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, seen by critics as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.

Bilateral ties have begun to improve under Koizumi's successor, Shinzo Abe, who paid an official visit to China shortly after he took office in September.

Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan told a visiting Japanese politician this week that Chinese leaders had agreed in principle to visit Japan next year, China's official Xinhua news agency said.

Tang told Koichi Kato of the ruling Liberal Democratic party that the two sides should regard the visit as an opportunity to promote friendly exchanges and cooperation and map out a long-term development plan for bilateral relations, it said.

Japanese World War Two leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal are honoured at the Tokyo shrine alongside millions of war dead, provoking anger in parts of Asia where many suffered under Japan's military aggression before and during the war.

The Shinto shrine's war history museum, which features exhibits such as a torpedo of the type used for manned suicide missions, is often criticised for presenting a one-sided view of World War Two.

Shrine authorities agreed in October to alter text on display in the museum stating that the United States deliberately forced Japan into the war. The new display panels on the US role in the war will be installed next month, the Mainichi said.

At the time the shrine said it saw no need to change references to China, but a shrine panel has now decided revisions are needed, the paper said.

The exhibition currently says, for example, that the Marco Polo Bridge incident -- the 1937 battle near Beijing that marked the beginning of the second Sino-Japanese war -- was sparked by Chinese nationalist troops' illegal attacks on the Japanese, the Mainichi said.

''There is no mistake in the facts, but the expressions are such that some parts could be misunderstood, so we will substitute softer expressions,'' the daily Mainichi Shimbun quoted a source involved in the revisions as saying of the references to China.

The shrine intends to refer to Chinese as well as Japanese texts in preparing the new exhibits, it said.

A spokeswoman for the Yasukuni Shrine said revisions were being made at the museum but declined to comment on their content.

REUTERS PB PM0941