TOKYO: Dozens of Japanese lawmakers visited Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine to the war dead yesterday, a day after Prime Minister Taro Aso was criticized by China and the Republic of Korea for having sent an offering to the shrine.

Official visits to the Yasukuni shrine, where Japanese wartime leaders are honored along with the nation's war-dead, deeply upset Japan's neighbors who see it as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.

Aso and his Cabinet ministers were not among the 87 lawmakers who visited the shrine during its three-day spring festival.