Japanese organisers of this month’s Asian Winter Games have changed the accommodation for Chinese and South Korean athletes after a row over a hotelier’s inflammatory war book, officials and local media said on Tuesday. The Tokyo-based APA hotel group and other hotels will welcome some 2,300 athletes and supporters from more than 30 countries to Sapporo for the February 19-26 Games. But APA, one of Japan’s largest hotel chains, has triggered an angry backlash from China for a book written by APA’s chief executive and placed in guest rooms, which claims that the infamous 1937 Nanjing massacre committed by Japanese troops was a “fabrication”. “Considering an instruction from the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) and other factors, we have decided that the Chinese and South Korean delegations will not stay at APA hotels,” a Japanese official of the organising committee said.
