China's Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall said on Thursday it strongly protests a response from Japan's chief cabinet secretary to books sold in a Japanese hotel chain which openly deny the massacre and forced prostitution in Korea and China during World War II.
"We need to tackle shared global challenges with a forward-looking view, rather than paying excessive attention to our unfortunate history," The Guardian quoted Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga as saying on Wednesday.
Though some Japanese right-wing forces have been denying the Nanjing Massacre for a long time, the statement of Japan's government spokesman has created a worse effect, Zhang Jianjun, head of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, said in a statement released on the hall's WeChat account on Thursday.
The books, written by APA Group CEO Toshio Motoya under the pen name Seiji Fuji, could be found in every APA hotel room in Japan and are for sale. The company refused to withdraw the books despite mounting pressure, claiming that the articles or opinions of the books in question are from adequate academic materials.
The book refers to the "300,000 people slaughtered in Nanking (now known as Nanjing)" as a "falsehood," and labels the Nanjing Massacre, "comfort women" and forced prostitution in China and South Korea as "untruths."
"The books portray Japan as 'a war victim,' that Japan had to 'fight' China's continuous 'provocations.' This is an attempt to clean up Japan's 'identity as an invader,' which turns the facts upside down," Zhang wrote in a separate statement.
"The truth of what happened will not change with the passing of time nor will the facts disappear because of deliberate ignorance," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a press briefing on Wednesday.
Motoya is also the deputy director of a support group of Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and the hotel's "right wing" background had been exposed on Japanese social media.
Many Sina Weibo users are calling on travel agencies to boycott the hotel chain. Chinese travel giant Ctrip removed reservation services for the APA Hotel. Platforms such as qunar.com and tuniu.com also removed the hotel from their rosters.
The organizing committee of the 2017 Asian Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan has demanded that the APA Hotel, which will accommodate athletes, to remove the books, the Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday.
