A Japanese state minister visited a controversial war shrine, a symbol of Japan's militarist past, in Tokyo Sunday in a move likely to anger China and South Korea.

Keiji Furuya, chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, paid homage at the Yasukuni shrine in the morning ahead of the shrine's annual spring festival, which runs from Monday to Wednesday.

"I made the visit today so that it would not interrupt my official duty," Furuya said in a statement to Japanese media.

The shrine honors Japan's war dead including leaders condemned as "Class A" war criminals by the allied powers and executed after World War II.

Furuya, who has regularly visited Yasukuni during its annual spring and autumn festivals and the August 15 anniversary of Japan's surrender, is the second minister in Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet to go there in the past week.

Abe, known for his nationalist views, drew protests himself from China and South Korea when he visited the shrine last December.

Conservative lawmakers make pilgrimages to the shrine during spring and autumn festivals and on the anniversary of the war.

Abe is widely expected to refrain from visiting the shrine during its spring festival ahead of US President Barack Obama's visit to Tokyo.