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.
