Japan moves China's Asian Winter Games team after hotel book row

Japanese organisers of this month's Asian Winter Games are seeking alternative accommodation for Chinese and South Korean athletes after a blazing row over a hotelier's inflammatory war book, officials said Wednesday.

The Tokyo-based APA hotel group, as well as Prince Hotels, will welcome some 2,300 athletes and supporters from more than 30 countries to Sapporo for the February 19-26 Games.

But APA, one of Japan's largest hotel chains, has triggered an angry backlash from China for a book it places in guest rooms which claims the infamous 1937 Nanjing massacre committed by Japanese troops was a "fabrication."

"We has received a request from the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) that Chinese delegations not stay at the hotel," a Japanese official of the organising committee told AFP.

"All the arrangements have to get the final approval from the OCA, so we will need to meet the request."

The official, who asked not to be named, also said the South Korean delegations will likely stay at the Sapporo Prince Hotel, which can accommodate 500 people.

"We have received a request from the South Korean side to find an alternative hotel, and we have informed the OCA of it," he said.

Organisers and the OCA are hastily rearranging with a final decision on where the 230 Chinese and 230 South Koreans will stay to be made shortly, he added.

The APA chain insisted it would not remove the controversial book, which also disputes Japan's wartime sex slavery in Korea, from its other hotels in Japan and abroad.

But APA said Tuesday it would now "temporarily" remove all items from rooms in Sapporo, except those deemed acceptable by Games organisers, though it stressed the move was not due to external pressure.

The Japanese official said that, regardless of the book row, team hotels were not supposed to keep "political and religious items" in guest rooms under the OCA rules.

Toshio Motoya, chief executive of the APA hotel group, wrote the book under a pen name disputing Chinese claims that 300,000 people died in a six-week killing spree by the Japanese military.

The Japanese 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 were killed in the Nanjing massacre, but there are few mainstream scholars who doubt that it took place.