Uproar over denial of Nanjing Massacre
The Facebook page of the APA Japanese hotel chain has come under siege from irate Chinese users, following reports that it is stocking books which openly deny the Nanjing Massacre in China and forced prostitution in China during World War II.
The APA hotel chain, which owns over 400 hotels and more than 66,000 rooms, put copies of a book, titled The Real History of Japan - Theoretical Modern History by Seiji Fuji, the penname of the chain's CEO, in all its rooms in Japan. The book was also on sale in the hotel's lobby, according to the Xinhua News Agency on Friday.
The book, a fabrication based on the rhetoric of the Japanese right-wing, has been denounced as nonsense by historians.
Many Chinese netizens have shown their anger on the APA hotel's Facebook page, with the latest post attracting more than 800 comments from Chinese netizens, and the hotel's Facebook rating reduced to less than 2 points out of 5.
The company refused to withdraw the books despite mounting pressure, claiming that the articles or opinions of the books in question are from adequate academic materials on Thursday.
"APA hotels have a duty to clean the guest rooms. Obviously, the books should be cleared, because they are worse than rubbish," a netizen posted.
"Forgotten history, you will never know how precious the current peace is, and you will never understand how innocent Chinese people suffered from being killed by war… the truth of history should never be garbled," read the most-reposted comment in both Chinese and Japanese.
After a WeChat article that called on Web users to show their voice on Facebook spread widely on Friday, most of the comments started to appear.
Meanwhile, Chinese netizens also addressed comments to the Twitter accounts of prominent Japanese right-wing individuals to show their anger.
China has urged Japan to give its citizens the correct view of history and to face up to history.
"I would like to say that only by remembering the past can we find the way to the future. To forget the past is to betray, and to deny the crimes is to relapse," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying noted at a daily briefing on Thursday.
Hua said that "I suggest those in Japan who stubbornly cling to their wrong view of history come to China to visit the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders to recall their conscience.
