Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, whose visits to a Shinto shrine for war dead have sparked a bitter row with China, joined in a tribute at Japan’s tomb of the unknown soldier yesterday. As heavy rain fell, Koizumi stood in silence with Japanese politicians and foreign diplomats as the ashes of 300 soldiers were added to those symbolising some 350,000 Japanese soldiers who died in World War Two.

Chidorigafuchi, an austere, non-denominational memorial near the Imperial Palace, honour’s Japan’s unidentified war dead whose remains are symbolically placed in a gold-plated urn inside a wooden coffin housed in a hexagonal pavilion. It stands in sharp contrast to the nearby Yasukuni Shinto shrine, once a symbol of wartime nationalism and now a site where war criminals convicted by a 1948 Allied tribunal are honoured with Japan’s 2.5 million war dead. Koizumi has visited Yasukuni each year since taking office in 2001 and last went there in January 2004.

Some Japanese have suggested prime ministers could honour war dead without angering China and other Asian neighbours that suffered under Japan’s wartime occupation by paying their respects at Chidorigafuchi rather than at Yasukuni. “On the occasion of this ceremony, I think deeply of the war dead who became the foundation for peace and prosperity of our country of today, and express my condolences,” Health Minister Hidehisa Otsuji said in an address at Monday’s ceremony. “In the meantime, I pledge to make efforts to pass on to the next generation many lessons learned from the war in order to ensure eternal peace.”

Koizumi, a member of the royal family and foreign diplomats each placed a chrysanthemum on a table set before the memorial’s coffin to music from a band of Imperial Palace guards. The latest remains came mainly from Southeast Asia and Pacific islands including Iwo Jima, where US forces defeated the Japanese in 1945 in a fierce battle that helped turn the tide of World War Two. Ceremonies are performed at Chidorigafuchi each May and the prime minister sometimes attends with other cabinet ministers — without prompting complaints from other Asian countries.

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