Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, in a televised meeting with the media, stressed that though Japan supports the US attack on Iraq, it would not take part in combat.
"We hope that the war ends promptly," he said, adding that Tokyo is focusing on what it can do to help in the country's rehabilitation process after the conflict is over.
A poll released on Tuesday showed 71 percent of voters oppose Australian involvement in US-led strikes on Iraq without an explicit UN mandate. Protest groups were preparing for rallies in major cities this weekend.
Students began leaving Australian schools and universities to protest the war and Australia's involvement in it.
"The war has begun so we are protesting," Sydney University activist Simon Butler said. "We will not sit in class and pretend everything is normal while our government helps carry out this massacre in our name."
The students were expected to mass in downtown Sydney. Peace activists also were planning to converge on the US embassy in Canberra.
Protests were expected elsewhere as well.
In the first hours of the attack, Pakistan's Interior Ministry spokesman Iftikar Ahmed said he expected small protests.
"Security arrangements have been made to handle these protests, but with tact," he added.
"We will do it without the use of force," Ahmed said.
Elsewhere in the Muslim world, some prayed for a quick end to the conflict.
Yunus Said, a Malaysian Muslim, had just finished prayers when he was told that the US-led strike on Iraq had begun.
"I have just prayed that war would be averted today," said Yunus, wearing a white skull cap as he emerged from a mosque near the 452m Petronas Twin Towers in central Kuala Lumpur.
"Now all I can pray is that it will be end quickly for the sake of the Iraqi people," he said.
Leading members of the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement -- South Africa, Malaysia, Cuba -- denounced the action against Iraq as "an illegitimate act of aggression."
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