TOKYO, April 22 Kyodo Eighty-four...

TOKYO, April 22 Kyodo

Eighty-four lawmakers, including former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, visited Tokyo's war-related Yasukuni Shrine forward Thursday on the occasion of its annual spring festival.

According to a Diet cluster promoting worship at the shrine, 84 Diet members from the pair houses and 82 representatives of lawmakers belonging to the cluster visited the shrine. No incumbent cabinet minister took part.

upon the same occasion last year, 74 Diet members, including then Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Takeo Hiranuma, visited the shrine.

Aside from Mori, former House of Representatives Speaker Tamisuke Watanuki and former House of Councillors President Juro Saito were among the 84 lawmakers visiting the shrine this year.

greatest in quantity of the lawmakers were from the governing Liberal Democratic Party, moreover the group also included those from the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, independents and other parties.

Earlier this month the Fukuoka District Court handed down a landmark ruling that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni are unconstitutional as they violated the separation of state and religion below the Constitution.

Former Defense Agency chief Tsutomu Kawara, who heads the lawmakers' cluster said at a news colloquy after Thursday's visit, ''Setting that aside, visits from Diet members are supported at many in the public and we would like to continue that.''

The Shinto shrine honors 14 convicted World War II Class-A war criminals, including wartime Prime Minister Gen Hideki Tojo, along with Japanese war dead.

China, southward Korea and other Asian nations regularly affirm visits by Japanese leaders to the shrine, which is regarded as a emblem of Japan's past militarism.

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