Japan's Hirohito shunned shrine over war criminals

TOKYO, Apr 26 (Reuters) Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japanese soldiers fought in World War Two, stopped visiting Japan's main shrine for war dead because he was unhappy that convicted war criminals were also honoured there, a newspaper said today, confirming a previous report.

Visits by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, seen by many in Asia as a symbol of Japan's past militarism, drew angry reactions from China and South Korea.

Incumbent Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has visited the shrine in the past but has not said whether he would go while in office, in an attempt to court China without angering his conservative base.

Ryogo Urabe, an imperial chamberlain, wrote in his diary that the late Hirohito -- the father of the current emperor -- stopped paying his respects at Yasukuni because of the shrine's 1978 decision to honour World War Two leaders convicted by an Allied tribunal as war criminals, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported.

''The circumstances under which his majesty cancelled his visit to Yasukuni Shrine ... Directly, he was not pleased with the honouring of Class A war criminals,'' the paper quoted Urabe writing in July 2001.

Last July, the Nikkei newspaper cited a memo by another courtier as also saying that Hirohito stopped visiting the shrine because of the war criminals.

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.

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

REUTERS AM RAI1251