There is outrage in Japan, Burma's biggest donor, over the apparently deliberate shooting of the photographer Kenji Nagai by a soldier at close range as troops fired on protesters in Rangoon last week.
Japan has withheld new aid to its former ally, one of Asia's poorest countries, since the pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was placed under house arrest in 2003, but it has continued to fund emergency health projects and provide training and technological assistance.
Now even that is at risk.
The Japanese foreign minister, Masahiko Komura, said today: "There have been calls to freeze aid entirely, but ordinary people in that country are already suffering. So we've decided to narrow down humanitarian aid for now."
In recent years Tokyo has given Burma about 3bn yen (£13m) in aid annually, compared with 10bn yen in 2001. It is now believed to be considering cutting about 500m yen in "human resources development aid".
Mr Komura said: "We have been limiting economic aid to humanitarian assistance, but we want to think about limiting it further.
"We cannot stop aid that benefits the public directly, such as that to fight polio, but we want to consider stopping assistance such as human resources development centres for now, even though they benefit the public in the long run."
Tokyo, which has long had cordial relations with Rangoon, is not preparing to cut trade ties or freeze the country's assets.
A senior official told Reuters news agency Japan had "a role to play" in persuading Burma to move towards democracy.
The body of the Japanese journalist, who was 50, was expected to arrive in Tokyo tomorrow. A postmortem examination will be carried out.
Footage of the shooting shows him falling forwards after apparently being shot. He clutches his camera as he lies dying, the rest of the crowd scrambling to escape the advancing soldiers.
Nagai, who worked for Tokyo-based APF News, had years of experience covering danger zones.
Japan's Fuji television said the footage, released by the opposition Democratic Voice of Burma, showed Nagai was killed intentionally, not by a stray bullet. Burma has told Japan he was shot accidentally.
There were reports today that the Burmese forces were broadcasting warnings from lorries that they were looking for protesters.
But pressure on the Burmese junta over the bloody suppression of the protests last week, in which dozens of people are believed to have been killed, showed no signs of abating today.
The Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, called for the 10-member Association of South-east Asian Nations to play a "more active" role in resolving the crisis and urged the junta to refrain from further violence.
