China Saturday protested against a Japanese cabinet minister's visit to the Yasukuni shrine.
"This once again shows the mistaken attitude of the current Japanese cabinet towards history," Xinhua quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei as saying in a statement.
China has lodged representations and protests with the Japanese government, he said.
Japanese Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Yoshitaka Shindo visited the Tokyo shrine that honours executed war criminals Saturday.
The shrine is seen as a symbol of Japan's wartime militarism as 14 class-A war criminals were enshrined there.
