Japanese War Shrine to Soften Wording on Exhibits

A controversial Japanese war shrine has decided to tone down its description of several exhibits amid criticism that they absolve Japan of responsibility for its wartime aggression, it was reported today.

Officials at the Yushukan museum, attached to Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, which honours 2.5 million Japanese war dead, will soften the wording of three displays to counter accusations that they present a one-sided view of Japan's war with China in the 1930s and 40s, according to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.

"There is no mistake in the facts, but some parts of the expressions could be misunderstood, so we will substitute them with softer expressions," the Mainichi quoted an unnamed shrine source as saying.

The museum will reportedly add more China-related materials to balance its view of history. Details of the surprise review are expected to appear in the shrine's newsletter next month.

Despite apologies by recent Japanese leaders for their country's conduct during the second world war, the museum continues to claim that Japan entered what it calls the greater east-Asian war in order to free countries from western imperialism.

But pressure from politicians with close ties to the shrine, which honours Japan's wartime prime minister, Hideki Tojo, and 13 other class-A war criminals, appears to have forced shrine officials to rethink.

In October, local media reported that the museum planned to change several exhibits that blamed the US for the outbreak of hostilities with Japan in December 1941 after complaints from US officials. In May, the Republican congressman Henry Hyde wrote a letter to the then prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, criticising his repeated visits to Yasukuni.

The Yushukan museum contains several other politically charged exhibits, including a Zero fighter - the plane used by kamikaze pilots - a Kaiten suicide torpedo and the first locomotive to travel along the Thailand-Burma "death railway".

Tojo's inclusion among those honoured at the shrine has become a source of discomfort even for conservative politicians. This week the defence minister, Fumio Kyuma, said he would not worship at Yasukuni as long as Tojo was honoured there. "It is difficult for me to bow my head there when Tojo, the man primarily responsible for the last war, is enshrined there," he said in an interview with Reuters.

The Allies sentenced Tojo, who led Japan for most of the war, to hang as a war criminal in 1948.

The campaign to remove his name gathered pace earlier this year after the revelation that Japan's wartime emperor, Hirohito, had stopped paying his respects at Yasukuni because he opposed Tojo's enshrinement. His son, the emperor Akihito, has not worshipped at Yasukuni since he succeeded his father in 1989.

Japan's rightwing foreign minister, Taro Aso, also supports the removal of class-A war criminals in order to enable members of the imperial family to visit Yasukuni without causing offence to China and South Korea.

China was a fierce critic of Mr Koizumi's annual visits to the shrine, including one on August 15, the anniversary of the end of the war.

His visits helped send Sino-Japanese relations to their lowest point in decades, although ties have improved slightly under Mr Koizumi's successor, Shinzo Abe, who met the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, in Beijing in October in the countries' first formal summit since 2001.

Mr Abe secretly visited Yasukuni several months before he became leader but has placated China by refusing to state publicly whether he will worship there as prime minister.