Chinese Mythomania

Japanese Hoteliers Refute China's Historical Fabrication
By JONATHAN SOBLE

Toshio Motoya, president of the APA Group, in Tokyo in 2015. 

TOKYO — She is the colorful face of Japan’s largest hotel chain, known for her garish fashion sense and business books with titles like “I Am a President.”
He is the darker side of the partnership: a polemicist who has leveraged the couple’s success to support contentious political causes.
Now Fumiko Motoya and her husband, Toshio, founders of APA Group, a Japanese real-estate and hotel empire, are facing a barrage of criticism in China. 

Their twin projects — business and conservative politics — collided this week in an uproar over historical books promoted at APA’s chain of 370 budget hotels, in which such publications are often distributed to rooms in much the same way as Gideon Bibles in American hotels.
The furor over the books, which promote the claim that Japanese forces did not massacre Chinese civilians in Nanjing in 1937, has prompted a rebuke from Beijing and threats of a boycott by Chinese travelers.
The number of foreigners visiting Japan reached a record 24 million last year, fueled in large part by a surge of visitors from China looking for good food, clean air and quality shopping. 

Despite continued tensions with its neighbor, Japan has embraced the tourist rush in its effort to look for economic growth drivers, with many retailers hiring Chinese-speaking sales clerks. 

Last year, Japan approved plans to legalize casinos, with Chinese gamblers partially in mind.
The Motoyas have shown how fraught that embrace can be. 

APA’s stance has touched off anger online in China and condemnation from official media outlets, along with calls for Chinese travelers to take their business elsewhere.
APA has been unrepentant. 

In a statement, it said that “historic interpretation and education vary among nations,” but it defended Mr. Motoya’s claims about Nanjing.
“Therefore, we have no intention to withdraw this book from our guest rooms,” the company said, adding that “no one-sided pressures” would force it to change its mind. 

APA invited readers to correct any inaccurate statements “so that we can seriously study about them.”
The Motoyas may not be as well known as another politically minded hotelier, Donald J. Trump, nor are their midmarket properties as gilded. 

But in Japan, they come close to being stars. 

Ms. Motoya, in particular, has embedded herself in popular culture though books, television appearances and an intermittent singing career.
Wearing the fanciful hats that are her trademark, Ms. Motoya appears in advertisements for APA’s hotels and “APA president” merchandise like curry and rice crackers. 

She judges televised karaoke contests sponsored by the company, and a CD of her singing nostalgia-tinged songs can be purchased on APA’s website.

While Fumiko Motoya represents the APA brand in public, her husband writes essays and books.

“As political patrons, they can’t be ignored,” said Tamotsu Sugano, an author who has researched Japanese patriotic groups. 

“They spread money everywhere.”
The Motoyas have used a fortune estimated to be in the billions of dollars to court and support politicians from the center-right establishment to the fringe. 

Guests at their long-running wine parties have included Shinzo Abe, the current prime minister, according to a record of an event in 2005 that includes a photograph and was circulated by APA at the time.
A Japanese magazine, Shukan Gendai, has estimated that Mr. Motoya, who serves as president of the overall APA Group while Fumiko leads the hotel division, is Japan’s fourth-richest person, with assets worth 220 billion yen, or about $1.9 billion. 

Shukan Gendai made its calculation based on tax records and on published APA documents, but because the company is privately owned, its disclosures are scarce and a precise figure is difficult to obtain.
The Motoyas hail from Fukui, a rural area on the Sea of Japan, where they met while working at a small local credit union, according to Ms. Motoya’s autobiography. 

They built APA from a small operation beginning in the 1970s, starting with real-estate sales before moving into hotels for budget-conscious business travelers. 

In 2015, they expanded to the United States by buying a 200-room former Hilton hotel in Woodbridge, N.J.
Patriotic literature has long been a staple, if odd, amenity at APA hotels in Japan. 

Much of it is written by Mr. Motoya, who uses a pen name but acknowledges authorship.
The books and articles describe an historical universe where Japan fought nobly in World War II and in which its alleged "atrocities" were invented by Chinese propagandists. 

The accounts differ sharply from those of Chinese "historians".
One piece of literature that was featured for years was an essay by a former air force general, Toshio Tamogami, which won a prize in an APA-sponsored contest in 2008. 

In it, Mr. Tamogami claimed that Japan had been duped into attacking the United States at Pearl Harbor in 1941, in a plot he said was hatched by Communists inside the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The latest controversy was touched off by a video on the internet. 

Posted by a couple describing themselves as an American woman and a Chinese man who stayed at an APA hotel, it shows excerpts from a book by Mr. Motoya refuting the Nanjing massacre fable and the forcible recruitment of women into wartime Japanese military brothels. 

The video spread quickly through the Chinese internet this week, generating outrage and promises of a boycott.
For its part, the Japanese government appears to want to keep its distance. 

The chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, declined to comment on the APA books when asked on Wednesday, saying only that Japan and China should seek “forward-looking” ways to cooperate.