Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged to never again wage war on the anniversary of Japan’s World War II surrender, while members of his cabinet marked the date with visits to a controversial shrine, moves set to anger China and South Korea.

With the Yasukuni Shrine seen as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism, Tokyo’s ties with China are already particularly strained this year after Beijing conducted unprecedented military exercises around Taiwan following the visit there by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier this month.

During the drills, several missiles fell in waters inside Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

The anniversary commemoration’s links to Yasukuni, a site that honours 14 Japanese wartime leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal, as well as war dead, meant Prime Minister Kishida faced a tricky balancing act on Monday.

On the dovish side of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), his task was to avoid irking international neighbours and partners while still keeping the more right-wing members of the party happy – particularly after the killing of former premier Shinzo Abe last month.

Prime Minister Kishida sent an offering to the central Tokyo shrine without visiting, Kyodo news agency reported. He also sent offerings to Yasukuni during festivals last year and this spring.

“We will never again repeat the horrors of war. I will continue to live up to this determined oath,” Prime Minister Kishida told a secular gathering elsewhere in Tokyo, also attended by Emperor Naruhito.

“In a world where conflicts are still unabated, Japan is a proactive leader in peace,” he said.

Footage on broadcaster NHK showed the shrine being visited early on Monday by several cabinet ministers, including Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi. Earlier the site was visited by Koichi Hagiuda, the head of the LDP’s policy research council and a key ally of slain former prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“It is natural for any country to pay respect to those who gave their lives for their country,” chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said earlier on Monday.

“Japan will continue to strengthen its relations with its neighbours, including China and South Korea.”

A group of lawmakers that normally visit en masse on August 15 said last week they would not do so due to a recent surge in COVID-19 cases.

Mr Abe was the last prime minister in recent memory to visit Yasukuni while in office, in 2013 – a visit that outraged both China and South Korea and even drew a rebuke from its close ally the United States.

The United States and Japan have become staunch security allies in the decades since the war’s end, but its legacy still haunts East Asia.

Koreans, who mark the date as National Liberation Day, resent Japan’s 1910-1945 colonisation of the peninsula, while China has bitter memories of imperial troops’ invasion and occupation of parts of the country from 1931-1945.

Prime Minister Kishida has pledged to substantially increase Japan’s defence budget, citing the increasingly tense regional security environment, but made no mention in a recent speech of one of Mr Abe’s dreams – revising the country’s pacifist constitution – although he has spoken of it before.

– AAP