Hotel’s U-turn on massacre denials
Print Edition
A JAPANESE hotel chain under fire for books by its president that deny the Nanjing Massacre in wartime China has confirmed that it will remove them from a hotel hosting athletes at the 2017 Sapporo Asian Winter Games.
In a statement posted on its website late on Tuesday, Tokyo-based hotel and real estate developer APA Group said it had received a written request from Games organizers with “advice” about amenities in the rooms.
“Based on this, during the period of the Games, we will remove materials from the rooms and hold them safely at the hotel,” it said.
The group has been at the center of a row over books by 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 facts of Korean women forced to work as prostitutes in wartime Japanese military brothels, the so-called “comfort women.”
Evidences show Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in Nanjing from December 1937 to January 1938. To the fury of China, some conservative Japanese politicians and academics still deny the massacre took place, or put the death toll much lower.
An official for the Games, which will run from February 19 to 26, said that when the APA Hotel in Sapporo was chosen to host athletes last year it had verbally agreed to remove the contentious material from the rooms.
“Our goal is to make an environment where all the athletes can perform at their best,” the official, who declined to be named, added.
Games organizers have been seeking alternative accommodation for Chinese and South Korean athletes because of the escalating controversy.
“We have received a request from the Olympic Council of Asia that Chinese delegations not stay at the hotel,” a Japanese official with the organizing committee told reporters.
“All the arrangements have to get the final approval from the OCA, so we will need to meet the request,” the official, who also declined to be identified, said.
A final decision on where the 230 Chinese and 230 South Koreans will stay is to be made shortly, he said.
The South Korean delegation will likely stay at the Sapporo Prince Hotel, which can accommodate 500 people, he added.
“We have received a request from the South Korean side to find an alternative hotel, and we have informed the OCA of it,” he said.
The APA chain insisted it would not remove the book, which also disputes Japan’s wartime sex slavery in Korea, from its other hotels in Japan and abroad.
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