Relatives of war dead honored at Yasukuni Shrine submitted to the Osaka District Court on Friday the first-ever lawsuit filed directly against the Shinto institution, demanding that their relatives' names be struck from its rolls.

Nine plaintiffs, including Ryuken Sugawara, 66, a Buddhist monk from Shimane Prefecture, and Yang Yuan-huang, 51, from Taiwan, claim the enshrinement of the war dead without the permission of surviving relatives infringes on their right to decide how to mourn their loved ones.

They also demanded that the state, together with the shrine, pay 1 million yen in compensation to each plaintiff, since the government assisted with the enshrinement of the war veterans by providing Yasukuni with the names of those killed in the war.

State control of the war-linked shrine ended after World War II.

Yang's relative belonged to a unit called the Takasago Volunteer Army that was recruited by the Japanese colonial government to fight on the Japanese side.

The Japanese plaintiffs, in their 50s to 70s, live in Toyama, Ishikawa, Osaka, Nara, Yamaguchi and Kagawa prefectures and are relatives of 11 Japanese soldiers and civilian workers who died during the war. Most of their kin were enshrined at Yasukuni by fall 1958, despite the plaintiffs' opposition.