Japan's largest hotel chain, an explosively revisionist history book left out for guests, a Chinese boycott and a brazenly defiant chief executive with a passion for lurid hats. One of the more dependable features of Japan, remarked a senior Tokyo-based diplomat last week, is never knowing for sure where the next nationalism-fuelled row will erupt, but being quite certain that one will somewhere.
The puzzle, say political scientists, is whether these are merely symptoms of an instinctive nationalism that has never been far from Japan's surface but is unlikely to spiral much beyond that level, or of an active swing to the right brought about by the rise of China and the popularity of Japan's rightwing prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
In common with others over the years — including prime ministerial visits to the controversial Yasukuni war shrine — the furore surrounding the APA hotel chain has escalated quickly and toxically. Last week, the company was forced to explain why it was furnishing its rooms with a book, penned under a pseudonym by the founder, that argues the 1937 massacre of Chinese soldiers and civilians was "a fabrication".
In a statement the hotel acknowledged "that historic interpretation and education vary among nations", but said it had no intention of withdrawing the book. By Friday, with the Chinese foreign ministry publicly condemning Japan for "trying to deny and distort history" and Chinese travel websites apparently blocking bookings in APA hotels, the stakes had soared.
Organisers of the Asian Winter Games, which begin next month, asked the hotel to remove the books from any hotels where visiting athletes are due to stay. "The thought has not crossed our minds," said the hotel.
The founders of APA, which manages around 370 highly recognisable, low-cost hotels around Japan, have never hidden their nationalism. Both Toshio Motoya and his celebrity wife, Fumiko, are passionate funders of rightwing activities. But they do so in the context of a country where nationalist sentiment burns fiercely but not quite hotly enough to ignite the concern of ordinary Japanese.
Those searching for day-to-day evidence of the nationalist flame do not have to look far — from the massive, but almost totally ignored, white trucks (paid for by a well-known manufacturer of rice crackers) that circle Tokyo's main financial district emblazoned with nationalist slogans (Save us, Emperor!) to the avowedly nationalist religious group Nippon Kaigi, to which many ruling party politicians quietly belong.
This nationalism can veer into outright racism. Last year Shintaro Ishihara, the virulently rightwing former governor of Tokyo, whose 2012 attempts to purchase the disputed Senkaku (Diaoyu in Chinese) islands sparked anti-Japanese riots across China, explained why he wished for the downfall of Beijing. "The reason I want China to collapse," he said, "is because I hate it."
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