JUNICHIRO KOIZUMI, the Japanese Prime Minister, violated the Constitution of the country by offering prayers at a nationalist Shinto shrine, a court ruled yesterday.

The Osaka High Court said that Mr Koizumi’s annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, in Tokyo, breached the constitutional ban on religious activity by the State and its officers. The ruling increases the pressure on Mr Koizumi to abandon his controversial visits, which have provoked furious official denunciations in China and South Korea. The ruling does not represent a barrier to further visits by the Prime Minister, who said: “I do not think my paying homage at Yasukuni violates the Constitution. I am not making the visits as an official duty. I have difficulty in understanding why they violate the Constitution.”

The case is one of seven claims for damages filed in Japanese courts. One hundred and eighty-eight plaintiffs were claiming damages of 10,000 yen (£50) each for mental anguish caused by Mr Koizumi’s visits. The plaintiffs include Buddhists, Christians and the descendants of Taiwanese who suffered under Japanese occupation.

Masaharu Otani, the Osaka judge, rejected the claim for compensation but strongly endorsed the claim that the Prime Minister’s actions violated Article 20 of the 1947 Constitution. Mr Otani said: “Based on the Prime Minister’s comments, the motives for his visit are deemed to be political . . . Therefore, we consider this to be the promotion of a particular religion.”

Since becoming Prime Minister four years ago, Mr Koizumi has made four visits to Yasukuni, which is dedicated to the 2.5 million Japanese who have died in wars since the 19th century, including war criminals convicted and hanged by allied tribunals after the Second World War.

The museum attached to the shrine offers an unashamedly nationalistic view of Japanese history and particularly the Second World War. In his judgment, Mr Otani observed that visitors to the shrine had increased since Mr Koizumi’s annual pilgrimage began.

No other Japanese Prime Minister had prayed at the shrine since the 1980s. Even then they emphasised that they visited in a personal, not an official, capacity, using private transport, making offerings from their own funds and omitting their official title from the visitor’s book.

Mr Koizumi pays for his own flowers but travels in an official car and signs himself “Prime Minister”. He insists that he has no wish to glorify war but offers prayers to soothe the souls of the dead. This week he told The Times: “[Japanese] have remorse about the Second World War, and they have the strong conviction that they must never again wage war.”

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