Japan's Supreme Court refused Friday to award damages to critics of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to a war shrine in its first ruling on the controversy that has set off tensions in East Asia.
Japan's top court said the plaintiffs had no grounds to deserve compensation for Koizumi's pilgrimages to Yasukuni shrine, which honors 2.5 million war dead including 14 top World War II war criminals.
Koizumi, who will step down in September, has gone to the shrine five times since taking office in 2001, infuriating China and South Korea which have refused one-on-one talks with him as a result.
In Friday's case, some 200 Japanese critics had sought a symbolic 10,000 yen (87 dollars) each from the government for "mental anguish" caused by Koizumi's 2001 visit.
The plaintiffs, who included relatives of war dead, Buddhists and Christians, also argued that the pilgrimage to the Shinto shrine violated Japan's constitutional separation of religion and state.
But a unanimous four-judge bench led by Judge Isao Imai refused to rule on the constitutionality of the visits and said the plaintiffs had no reason to be compensated. "Visiting a shrine cannot by its nature pressure or interfere on other people's religious life," the ruling said.
"Therefore, even if people visit a particular shrine and it hurts other people's religious feelings or makes them feel unpleasant, it cannot be seen as damage to the plaintiffs' interests and they cannot seek compensation automatically. "There is no difference in a visit to Yasukuni shrine by a man with the position of prime minister," he wrote.
Judgements of lower courts on similar cases have been divided, with two verdicts ruling that Koizumi's visits were "public" and violated the constitution.
The prime minister has said that his repeated trips to the Shinto sanctuary, which he most recently visited on October 17, are intended to pay respect to the dead and to resolve not to make war again.
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