TOKYO - A Japanese court ruled on April 7 that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had violated the constitution by visiting a shrine honouring Japan's military war dead, a landmark ruling on the annual pilgrimages that have angered Japan's neighbours, particularly China.

But in a reaction likely to further stoke Beijing's ire, Koizumi vowed to keep visiting Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine.

Koizumi's visits to the shrine - where convicted war criminals are among those honoured - have impaired ties with China, where many have bitter memories of Japan's military aggression before and during World War II.

Critics at home and abroad see the shrine as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.

In what media said was the first ruling of its kind, the Fukuoka District Court ruled that Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni on August 13, 2001 violated the constitutional separation of religion and state.

But the court rejected a demand by the 211 plaintiffs for damages of 100,000 yen (US$945) each.

"Despite strong opposition from within the (ruling) Liberal Democratic Party and ordinary citizens, Koizumi went four times to Yasukuni, which cannot be said to be the best place to honour war dead," the Kyodo news agency quoted the court as saying in its ruling. "This was based on political calculations."

Koizumi pledged to visit Yasukuni as prime minister when he was campaigning for the post in 2001, a promise aimed at least partly at attracting support from a powerful association of veterans and relatives of war dead.

He has repeatedly stated that his visits are intended to pray for peace and reiterated Japan should never go to war again.

"It's strange," Koizumi told reporters after news of the court ruling. "I don't know why it violated the constitution."

Asked if he would go again, Koizumi said: "I will."

Epoch-making ruling

Other lawsuits have been filed against Koizumi's visits to the shrine, which he has made every year since taking office in April 2001.

Lawyers said Wednesday's ruling could affect those where verdicts were still pending.

"This is an epoch-making ruling," said Junichi Kusanagi, a lawyer who filed a similar lawsuit in which the court declined to rule on the constitutionality of the visits.

"Rulings on other Yasukuni lawsuits won't be able to ignore this ruling," he said. "Now that such a ruling has been handed down, Prime Minister Koizumi should declare that he will stop visiting the Yasukuni shrine in his capacity as prime minister."

Trade and investment between China and Japan are booming, but ghosts of a bitter past still haunt bilateral ties nearly six decades after the end of World War II.

Some Japanese politicians periodically inflame Chinese anger by saying accounts of past atrocities are exaggerated. Others argue that the time for apologies has passed.

Some Japanese courts appear to be growing more inclined to favour plaintiffs in cases related to Japan's wartime actions.

The Niigata District Court in northern Japan last month ordered the government and a transport firm to compensate a group of Chinese who were forced to toil in Japan during World War II.

The labourers were among the tens of thousands of Koreans and Chinese brought to Japan as forced labour to keep the nation's war machine running.

(Agencies via Xinhua)