Chinese in Tokyo protest hotel boss who wrote Nanking Massacre-denying book

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Chinese residents in Japan march at a protest against the Japanese hotel chain APA in Tokyo. Photo: Kyodo

Published: 11:58am, 6 Feb 2017Updated: 11:58am, 6 Feb 2017

Dozens of protesters marched through the streets of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district carrying banners to protest a hotel chain under fire for books its president wrote denying the Nanking 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 Nanking 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”.

About 100 Chinese gathered in Shinjuku Central Park in downtown Tokyo Sunday afternoon, holding banners with slogans such as “Freedom of speech shall not violate human conscience” and “Peace shall be treasured”, Xinhua reported.

The book that denies the 1937 Nanking Massacre. Photo: Kyodo

They were met by counter-protesters carrying signs saying “Japan is a country with freedom of speech, and you should change China into the country that has the right of free speech as well.” Both groups dispersed without incident once past the closest APA Hotel on the march route.