Japan's leading APA Group business hotel chain has sparked public outrage recently as books carried in its hotel rooms deny Japan's history of aggression including the 1937 Nanking Massacre and the forced recruitment of "comfort women" before and during World War II.
Earlier this week, two APA hotel guests from New York uploaded a video message on the internet, showing the books placed in the hotel guest rooms and sold at the front desk as well. The online video soon went viral on social media sites and attracted tens of millions of views.
The books, with versions in Japanese and English, written by APA Chief Executive Toshio Motoya, are filled with right-wing, revisionist views, including but not limited to statements such as: "the Nanking Massacre was fabricated by the Chinese side and did not actually happen," "comfort women" were just common prostitutes, and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East is the winner's revenge to the loser.
"Comfort women" is a euphemism used to describe Asian women who were forced into sexual enslavement in Japanese military brothels during Japan's invasion of its Asian neighbors before and during the World War II.
In the books, the author also called for taking advantage of the Japan-U.S. alliance to take on China and to strive for the early accomplishment of revising Japan's postwar pacifist Constitution.
Inside a roughy 5-square-meter room of one of the APA chain's hotels in Shinjuku, one of the busiest and most vibrant commercial centers in Tokyo, Xinhua independently confirmed on Wednesday that two books were present on a shelf beside a dressing mirror.
Both were titled: "The Real History of Japan - Theoretical Modern History." One of them carrying the subtitle: "Proposal III to Proud Motherland & Revival of Japan," includes social commentaries written by Seishi Fuji, the penname of Toshio Motoya, between 2014-2015. The other book, with the subtitle: "Proposal IV to Proud Motherland & Revival of Japan," includes his social commentaries written during 2015-2016.
No publishing house could be found in the bilingual books, while "800 yen" (around 7 U.S. dollars) was printed on the covers of the English version indicating the price. A note stuck on the book read "available for sale at front desk."
A hotel clerk at the front desk told Xinhua that some guests in the hotel had purchased the books on the day.
Despite international protest, the APA Group refused to remove the books from its hotel rooms. The group on Tuesday issued a statement on its website saying that "we have no intention to withdraw this book from our guest rooms, no matter how many denouncements may be made about it from whatever viewpoint."
Furthermore, the group deliberately enclosed the contents of "Nanking Massacre" on page 6 of the book in the statement.
In response to the incident, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying on Tuesday told a daily press conference that it is discouraging that despite the international community acknowledging the serious crimes against humanity committed by Japan during World War II, there are still forces in Japan attempting to deny or distort the truth.
"The truth of what happened will not be changed by passing of time nor will the facts disappear because of deliberate ignorance," Hua said.
She urged the Japanese government to face up and reflect on the country's past aggressions, ensure its population are exposed to a true telling of history, and for it to regain trust from its Asian neighbors and the international community through concrete action.
Meanwhile, Chinese historian Zhang Jianjun, chief researcher with the Nanjing Massacre research institute, said the book is a fabrication based on the rhetoric of the Japanese right-wing.
Nanjing was home to more than 600,000 people before the slaughter of around 300,000 soldiers and civilians in December 1937, but the book claims that there were only 200,000 people in the city at the time.
In addition, the book said there were no eyewitness accounts of the massacre by either Chinese or Japanese observers, despite the existence of a plethora of diaries, letters and photographs.
"It is nonsense," said Zhang, curator of the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.
