China urges boycott of Japanese hotel chain at centre of spat over war crimes
Book stocked in rooms at APA hotels questions death toll from Rape of Nanking in 1937
With only days to go before the Lunar New Year holiday unleashes hordes of travellers, China’s tourism officials are calling for a boycott of a Japanese hotel chain that stocks its rooms with a book questioning the death toll in the Rape of Nanking.
The book is by Seiji Fuji, the pen name for Toshio Motoya, CEO of the Tokyo-based APA hotel chain. The book contains a paragraph that calls into question the toll of 300,000 dead during the 1937 massacre of Chinese civilians by the Japanese military. Japanese nationalists have long said far fewer died, or denied outright that there was a massacre.
The controversy came to a head over the past week after a video was posted online – subtitled in Chinese and narrated by a woman, presumably a hotel guest – that brought attention to the offending text.
Zhang Lizhong, the spokesman for China’s National Tourism Administration, has urged individual Chinese tourists to join the boycott, adding in a statement: “We demand that all operators with international tours and online platforms completely stop all cooperation with this hotel chain.”
Travel sites popular with tourists from China, such as tuniu.com, Ctrip.com and qunar.com, have dropped APA properties, news reports say.
In response to a formal complaint from Beijing last week, the chain, which operates 400-plus hotels, issued a statement.
