Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi will visit China for the first time Sept. 8-10 in a bid to improve relations that have been soured by politicians' visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, government sources said Saturday.
The sources said Kawaguchi hopes to meet with Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan during her visit.
China protested bitterly at Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni Shrine in April, leading to Koizumi's cancellation of his planned trip to Beijing this fall to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the normalization of relations between the two nations.
Defense Agency chief Gen Nakatani and four other members of the Koizumi Cabinet visited the Shinto shrine Thursday to mark the 57th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II, prompting China to claim that Japan is not facing up to its history of military aggression.
The Shinto shrine, widely viewed as a symbol of Japan's militarism before and during the war, honors Class-A war criminals along with the nation's 2.5 million war dead.
Kawaguchi is expected to seek China's understanding of the importance that the Koizumi government attaches to ties between Tokyo and Beijing, the sources added.
She is also expected to discuss with her Chinese hosts about the situation on the Korean Peninsula and the ongoing salvage of an unidentified ship, which sank in the East China Sea after exchanging fire with Japan Coast Guard patrol boats last December.
Japan believes the ship was North Korean and on a spying or drug-trafficking mission off the Japanese coast. North Korea has denied the allegations.
An estimated 15 people were aboard the ship. The coast guard has recovered the remains of four people.