Japan's prime minister touched off a diplomatic firestorm in Asia on Monday by visiting a shrine to World War II dead that Japan's neighbors say symbolizes the nation's brutal, militaristic past.

South Korea and China acted swiftly after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit. South Korea scrapped talks for a summit in December, ending a string of annual "shuttle" summits between leaders. China's Foreign Ministry declared Koizumi's trip to the shrine an outrage and called off a visit next Sunday by Japan's foreign minister.

Koizumi's visit marked the fifth-straight year that he has gone to the Yasukuni Shrine, a sanctuary that recalls the era when Japan colonized the Korean Peninsula and parts of China. His last visit was on New Year's Day 2004.

The visits have been condemned repeatedly by Japan's neighbors, who complain that the country hasn't accepted its guilt for World War II-era atrocities. Japan colonized the Korean Peninsula and parts of China before World War II, and historians say its troops dragooned local women for sex and conducted biological experiments on human beings.

In the postwar era, Japan has offered numerous apologies for its wartime conduct, and provided $30 billion in assistance and loans to China, but China and other Asian countries say Japan must do more, including revising the way the war is taught in Japanese schools.

Koizumi's chief Cabinet secretary, Hiroyuki Hosoda, said the prime minister visited the shrine on the first day of its four-day autumn festival as a private citizen, not as an elected leader.

There were indications that Koizumi tried to keep the visit low-key. He wore a dark gray suit, rather than a traditional kimono and didn't enter the main hall or sign a register as in past years.

He also didn't follow the Shinto style of worship: bowing twice, clapping twice and bowing again. He bowed once, threw money into an offering box, prayed for 30 seconds or so, bowed again, then left.

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