Dozens of Japanese lawmakers prayed at a controversial shrine that venerates Japan’s war dead, including several Class-A war criminals.  Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent an offering to the Yasukuni Shrine, despite the trouble it always kicks up with Japan’s neighbors.

Imperial Japan’s World War II leader Hideki Tojo is one of the war criminals enshrined at Yasukuni.  Victims of Japan’s World War II atrocities see Yasukuni as a celebration of militarism.

Abe sent a set of Shinto “Masakaki” ornaments for Yasukuni’s autumn festival.  110 lawmakers and 80 aides prayed at the shrine for the war dead, although none was a cabinet level minister.  The Prime Minister was hoping for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Beijing in November, but this would tend to throw a spanner in it.

“China is seriously concerned about and resolutely opposed to the negative tendencies which have appeared in Japan regarding the Yasukuni shrine,” said a Chinese foreign ministry statement.