Seisuke Okuno, a former Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker known for his controversial views on Japan's wartime aggression against other Asian countries, died at his home in Tokyo on Wednesday, the LDP said Thursday. He was 103.

Okuno, a native of Nara Prefecture, began his career as a government bureaucrat in 1938. He won his first House of Representatives seat in 1963 and was re-elected 12 times.

In 1988, Okuno stepped down from the post of chief of the old National Land Agency after he said Japan had "no intention to invade" China and the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which triggered the Second Sino-Japanese War, was an "accident."