SHANGHAI: China’s tourism authority called Tuesday for a boycott of Tokyo-based hotel group APA in an escalating row over a book by the company’s CEO denying a Japanese wartime massacre took place. Copies of the book asserting that the 1937 massacre by Japanese soldiers in the Chinese city of Nanjing did not occur have been placed in hundreds of rooms operated by the APA hotel group, angering Beijing. APA has so far refused to remove copies of the book, written under a pen name by its CEO Toshio Motoya, despite Chinese criticism. The Japanese military invaded China in the 1930s and the two countries fought a full-scale war from 1937 until Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945. Some respected foreign academics estimate a lower number than China contends were killed in the massacre, but there is no mainstream scholarship doubting that it took place.

Source: Manila Times January 24, 2017 12:19 UTC