Japan's largest hotel chain is attracting attention yet again over the CEO's promotion of revisionist history. All Apa hotel rooms offer a bedside book written by CEO Toshio Motoya (under the pen name Seiji Fuji) that denies the Nanking Massacre ever happened.
Apa Group is no stranger to controversy. Back in 2008, Air Self-Defense Force Chief Toshio Tamogami won a writing contest sponsored by the chain with an essay in which he justified Japan's invasion of China, a stand for which he was fired.
Chinese booking sites have apparently dropped Apa from their offerings. Using the hotel as a platform for promoting an exculpatory view of Japan's wartime misdeeds looks like a bad business decision, and it also reinforces negative (and inaccurate) perceptions among Chinese about Japan's collective amnesia regarding its war crimes. Apa does not represent the government's official view, but in denying the Nanking Massacre, the firm is poisoning bilateral ties and making Japan appear churlish in the court of global public opinion.
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