China is claiming that Japan broke a “gentlemen’s agreement” reached 20 years ago under which the Japanese prime minister was not to visit Yasukuni Shrine.

There was a gentlemen’s agreement in which prime ministers, chief cabinet secretaries and foreign ministers — who are the ‘face’ of the Japanese government and represent Japan’s international image — would not go (to Yasukuni),” Kyodo news agency quoted Ambassador Wang Yi as telling a ruling party foreign affairs panel.

China had agreed in return not to make an issue of visits to Yasukuni by private citizens or rank-and-file politicians, Wang added.

The deal was allegedly reached in 1985 after then-prime minister Yasuhiro Nakasone made an official visit to the shrine. Japan, however, is denying that such an agreement ever existed.

Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone denied that there was any such informal agreement between Japan and China.

“It goes completely against the facts,” Nakasone told reporters at his office in Tokyo. “We never had that kind of agreement. Perhaps it is a mistaken memory on the part of the ambassador.”

Nakasone said he phoned the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo to lodge a protest against Wang’s remarks, made during a speech at the Liberal Democratic Party’s headquarters in Tokyo.