But plans for the commemoration on Monday collapsed in farce today as the minister, Taro Aso, yielded to pressure from PoW groups and withdrew the invitations.

Fearing scrutiny of his family's wartime past, the right-wing politican will go through with the ceremony at the Juganji temple almost entirely alone.

The Aso Group, Mr Aso’s family company, used prisoners of war, including those from Britain, as slave labourers in its coalmines during the Second World War. In a message explaining the reversal, Mr Aso told his guests that he wanted to perform the ceremony in private, so their attendance would not be appropriate.

The disinvited include Sir Graham Fry, the British Ambassador, and his Australian and Canadian counterparts. The American and Dutch envoys had already told Mr Aso they would be unable to attend.

The Buddhist Juganji temple used to house 1,086 miniature urns containing the bones of Allied soldiers from eight nations that were collected by Japanese priests in the chaotic aftermath of the war. The remains have long since been removed or repatriated.

Officials at the temple said that the event on Monday had been engineered to coincide with Mr Aso's schedule, and that the annual remembrance ceremony usually took place in late August.

Mr Aso’s invitation to the ambassadors was widely seen as an attempt to deflect mounting bitterness about his Government’s failure to acknowledge fully the country’s wartime past.

Australian PoW groups were especially vocal in denouncing the event as a cynical photo opportunity for Mr Aso, who is likely to contest the post of Prime Minister when Junichiro Koizumi steps down in September.

Ill-feeling has increased dramatically since Mr Koizumi began making annual pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine, in central Tokyo, which enshrines the souls of the Japanese war dead, including Class A war criminals. Antipathy is especially strong in China and Korea, which were occupied by Japanese forces.

Few have been more supportive of the Prime Minister than Mr Aso, an outspoken nationalist, whose controversial remarks have outraged many Japanese as well as their Asian neighbours since he became Foreign Minister last autumn. So it is all the more striking that he should choose to visit Juganji, a small and little-known temple in the eastern suburbs of the city of Osaka.

No one in the Government will say so on the record, but the visit is clearly intended to counteract the diplomatic damage done to Japan by Mr Koizumi’s Yasukuni visits.Over the years the temple has been visited by the families of dead PoWs, but never before has a Japanese Cabinet minister made the three-hour journey from Tokyo.

That Mr Aso should be the first is contentious, not only because of his family history. As Foreign Minister he has also provoked rage in Asia by denouncing China as a military threat, praising Japan’s former colonial administration of Taiwan, and saying that Emperor Akihito should visit the Yasukuni Shrine.

“He keeps making remarks on topics that are likely to cause a stir in diplomatic relations, raising the question of whether he is fit for the job of Foreign Minister,” the otherwise conservative Yomiuri newspaper said.

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