The 27-man squad include players from the Parachute Regiment and crew of the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth II

A British military rugby team has been embarrassed after making a pilgrimage to a Japanese shrine that honours the souls of executed war criminals.

Members of the UK Armed Forces rugby team have been dressed down by Paul Madden, British ambassador to Tokyo, after being given a guided tour of the Yasukuni Shrine, where the country’s war dead are honoured as Shinto gods.

The team hastily removed a post about its visit to the shrine and its notorious museum, a celebration of Japanese martial prowess and wartime glory. Among other exhibits it features an original Zero fighter plane, a kamikaze submarine and one of the locomotives from the Thailand-Burma “Death Railway”.

The rugby team also tweeted a photograph showing its smiling members posing alongside two