Author Haruki Murakami calls for fight against ‘replacing memory’ as historical revisionists in Japan grow bolder

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Invading Japanese troops bury Chinese people alive during the Nanjing Massacre in 1937. File photo: Xinhua

Published: 1:52pm, 3 Apr 2017Updated: 10:48pm, 3 Apr 2017

Haruki Murakami, the Japanese author perennially pegged as a contender for the Nobel literature prize, has called for a fight against historical revisionism in a rare interview with Japanese media.

His comments came after a successful Japanese hotel chain operator triggered an angry backlash from China earlier this year for his book claiming the 1937 Nanjing massacre committed by Japanese troops a “fabrication”.

Critics say that revisionists have grown bolder under nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who says Japan must shake off past constraints, including altering its war-renouncing constitution imposed by American occupiers after the second world war.

Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. Photo: AFP

Toshio Motoya not only penned a book calling the Nanjing massacre a lie but proudly displays it in guest rooms of his nationwide chain of APA hotels.

China says 300,000 people died in a six-week spree of killing, rape and destruction by the Japanese military that began in December 1937.

Some respected academics estimate a lower number of victims, but mainstream scholarship does not question that the incident, known as the “Rape of Nanking,” took place.