Tokyo, Oct 31: Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama arrived in Tokyo today morning on a 12-day visit which is likely to anger Japan's key neighbour and trading partner China. A Japan Airlines Jet with the Dalai Lama onboard landed at Narita airport, southeast of Tokyo, early in the morning from New Delhi, airport officials said. He was met by members of Japan's Parliamentarian Group for Tibet. Kyodo news said yesterday that a diplomat at the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo visited a lawmaker from the Tibet Group in August to urge him to scrap the invitation, saying it was undesirable for Japan-China relations to invite him.


The lawmaker rejected the request, Kyodo said.
Following a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule by Tibetans, Beijing has urged Japan not to admit the Dalai Lama into the country.


China, which annexed Tibet in 1950, is opposed to any international appearances by the Dalai Lama, whom it regularly condemns as a troublemaker and "splittist".
He will also hold a meeting in Tokyo with Masatoshi Koshiba, who was awarded the Nobel prize for physics last year, said the Tibetan leader's press secretary.


The Dalai Lama is then to make pilgrimages to Nara, western Japan, to the Kofukuji temple and the Todaiji temples, the most famous and oldest Buddhist temples in Japan.

Bureau Report