JAPANESE Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said he wants to explain to China and South Korea about his visit to a shrine honouring the nation's war dead, including 14 major war criminals.
However, Beijing again demanded that he correct his views on the country's role in the second world war.
Mr Abe said Japan had not made any direct overtures, but he hopes the leaders can meet to help resolve antagonism over territorial disputes and historical issues.
He said: "At the moment, there is no plan for a summit meeting, but since there are some difficulties and issues we should be speaking together without setting any preconditions.
"I would really like to explain the intent of my visits to the Yasukuni shrine directly to them.
The door to dialogue is open. I would like to hold Japan-China and Japan-South Korea summit meetings."
Japan colonised Korea and occupied parts of China before and during the war and that often brutal legacy still taints relations with its neighbours decades on.
China and South Korea reacted angrily to Mr Abe's Boxing Day visit to the shrine in Tokyo.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has said Mr Abe will not be welcome in Beijing until he admits that the trip was a mistake.
The ministry said that to improve relations with Beijing, Mr Abe "needs to correctly view and deeply reflect on the Japan's militarist history of external invasion and colonialism, show sincerity and make concrete efforts to improve ties with neighbouring countries".
The Chinese also accused Mr Abe of hypocrisy, while South Korean president Park Geun-hye blamed Tokyo for the strained ties and said any summit with Abe could be held only after sufficient preparations.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article