"We strongly protest and seriously condemn the Japanese leader's acts," Beijing's foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement immediately after Abe's visit to the shrine.
Yasukuni is believed to be the repository of around 2.5 million souls of Japan's war dead, most of them common soldiers but also including several high-level officials executed for war crimes after World War II, who were enshrined in the 1970s.
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