TOKYO: About 200 protesters marched through the streets of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district on Sunday carrying banners to protest a hotel chain under fire for books its president wrote denying the Nanjing Massacre in wartime China ever happened.
Tokyo-based hotel and real estate developer APA Group is at the centre of a furore over books by its founder and president, Toshio Motoya, which contain his revisionist views on history and are placed in every room of the company’s 400-plus APA Hotels.
Motoya, using the pen name Seiji Fuji, wrote of the Nanjing Massacre that “these acts were all said to be committed by the Japanese army, but this is not true. ” He also denied stories of Korean women forced to work as prostitutes in wartime military brothels, the so-called “comfort women”.
Video shot by eyewitnesses showed protesters carrying banners saying “Cherish Peace” and “Resist APA resolutely and defend national dignity” in both Chinese and Japanese marching through a busy shopping district of Tokyo.
