Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visits China on Monday for talks aimed at improving chilly ties haunted by history.

Junichiro Koizumi expressed an apology and mourning for those Chinese people who died during the war while visiting the Memorial Hall of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, which is near the Lugou (Marco Polo) Bridge, some 15 kilometers southwest of Beijing, where Japan used an exchange of fire with Chinese troops on July 7,1937 as a pretext to launch a full invasion of China.

Koizumi also said that as prime minister of Japan he will devote himself to the development of Japan-China friendly relations.

The Prime Minister wrote the character ??Zhong Shu?? in the visitor's book at the Memorial Hall of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, explaining that the words mean pleading for sympathy, understanding and forgiveness.

Koizumi was the second Japanese prime minister to visit the site, following Tomiichi Murayama in 1995.

Koizumi plans a similar one-day visit to South Korea next week, hoping to soothe the anger sparked by his August visit to a Tokyo shrine where war criminals are honored along with Japan's war dead, and by the approval of a controversial history text critics say whitewashes Japan's wartime atrocities.

The Japanese leader also wants to ease concerns about Tokyo's steps toward ever-tighter security ties with the United States as it rushes to enact a new law to let its military provide non-combat support for a US-led war on terrorism.

But analysts say achieving a fundamental warming of chilly ties will be tough.

"To erase the mistrust among the peoples of the two countries will be difficult to do merely with a one-day trip," a weekend editorial in the liberal Asahi Shimbun newspaper said.

"We want him to see with his own eyes and experience first-hand the actual situation in the two countries which always stress the problems of history," the paper said. "Then he will understand the difficulties and the importance of diplomacy with neighbours, and take a first step toward repairing frayed ties."

China, as well as South Korea, rebuffed Koizumi's call for a leaders' summit after his controversial August 13 to Yasukuni Shrine.

Ties had already been frayed by Tokyo's approval of the controversial school history text, by Japan's decision to let Taiwan's Lee Teng-hui visit for "medical treatment" in April and by trade rows over Chinese imports.

(Edited by Xiaowei for china.org.cn from reports by Xinhua News Agency and China Daily 10/08/2001)