Prime Minister Taro Aso and 15 ministers in his 17-member Cabinet will likely refrain from visiting Yasukuni Shrine on Saturday, the 64th anniversary of the end of World War II, to avoid repercussions from neighboring countries.
Seiko Noda, minister in charge of consumer affairs, was the only Cabinet member to clearly announce her intention to visit Yasukuni.
"I am arranging the schedule right now," Noda told a news conference Tuesday. "Basically, (I will go) as I do every year."
She visited the shrine on the anniversary last year when she was a member of Yasuo Fukuda's Cabinet.
Noda said, however, she would visit the contentious shrine for the war dead "in a private capacity."
The Tokyo shrine is seen by many as a symbol of Japan's wartime military aggression.
Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said he will "make an appropriate decision,"but the remaining 15 ministers, including Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura and Akira Amari, state minister in charge of administrative reform, said they had no plans to visit the shrine on the anniversary.
"I used to visit the shrine on and around the 15th but have refrained from making a visit since I became a state minister because I don't want to it to develop into a political issue," Amari said.
Yuko Obuchi, in charge of issues related to the declining birthrate, and Motoo Hayashi, state minister in charge of disaster preparedness, are also among those who announced they would refrain from visiting Yasukuni on Saturday.
Aso hinted Monday evening he would shun a visit, saying: "I think it is wrong to make people who sacrificed their precious lives for the state a political or election issue or fodder for newspapers. They should be far away from the (media) frenzy and kept in a place for praying more quietly."