Toshio Motoya is the chief executive of the APA Group, a real estate and hotel development company based in Tokyo. He has placed his books in all of the company’s hotels, which number more than 400.
In his most recent work, "The Real History of Japan: Japan Pride," he alleges that the "so-called Nanking Massacre story" is "fabricated" and instead blames the Chinese army for killing its own people.
The Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking occurred during the Sino-Japanese War, when over a six-week period in late 1937 the Imperial Japanese Army brutally killed hundreds of thousands of people in the city of Nanking, then the capital of nationalist China. Between 20,000 and 80,000 women were sexually assaulted during the rampage.
China, which claims 300,000 people died in Nanking at the hands of the Japanese between December 1937 and January 1938, is incensed at Japanese conservatives who lowball the death toll or or claim the massacre never took place at all.
In "The Real History of Japan," which is printed in both Japanese and English, Motoya writes, "The Japanese army merely exposed and put to death the plainclothes soldiers (guerrillas) who abandoned their uniforms, stole the garments of regular citizens, and were hiding in the refugee zone with weapons and ammunition," according to the Asia Times.
Threats of boycott and Chinese protests forced the APA Group to temporarily remove the books from its hotels on the island of Hokkaido earlier this year when the island hosted athletes for a sporting competition.
At an event marking his book’s publication on Friday, Motoya said, "Would I remove the books during the Olympics just because they’re the Tokyo Olympics? That’s really stupid," adding, "Is there something strange about putting my books in my hotels? From the start, I have no intention of removing them for that reason."
He also denied that his books were removed from the Hokkaido hotels over their content, instead claiming a contractual stipulation required that “nothing with information” could be in the hotel rooms.
Motoya has come under fire for his views before, most recently in February when he was quoted in an APA magazine distributed in Canadian hotels as saying "Jewish people control American information, finance, and laws, and they benefit greatly from globalization because they move their massive profits to tax havens so they don’t have to pay any taxes. Many Jewish people support the Democratic Party."
The article’s subtitle was "An American counteroffensive against Jewish globalism."
After an outcry by Jewish groups in Canada, Motoya released a statement saying, "It is very unfortunate that my writings gave you an erroneous impression that I hold anti-Semitic beliefs."
