These visits were highly irritating to China and Japan's other neighbors in Asia; nations which suffered brutal Japanese invasions during that war. The widely shared perception of these annual visits was that Japan still honored those who labored to forcibly subjugate most of Asia.
It is therefore important that Japan's new Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, pointedly did not visit the Yasukuni Shrine on this anniversary, nor did any member of his cabinet. This omission may help bring about rapprochement between Japan and the other Asian nations. See this USA Today story for details.
The other DrC and I lived in Asia some years ago and have toured there recently. We've learned that Japan made enemies almost everywhere they occupied during the 1930s and 1940s, a partial exception being Taiwan.
Prime Minister Kan avoiding the Yasukuni Shrine may send a positive signal to China, the two Koreas, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, and Malaysia, as well as to many small island nations across the Pacific.
