Japanese Publisher Shut Down

One of Japan's most prestigious publishers has buckled under pressure from the Holocaust Lobby and pulled the February issue of its Marco Polo magazine – a 200,000 circulation monthly of news and opinion – from newsstands barely a week after it went on sale. The publisher then announced it would have to shut down the magazine for good after the Simon Wiesenthal Center pressured Mitsubishi, Volkswagen, Cartier, and Philip Morris to cancel lucrative advertising contracts with the magazine. The draconian measures came after Marco Polo published an illustrated ten-page article, “The Greatest Taboo of Postwar History: There Were No Nazi Gas Chambers,” by Japanese revisionist Dr. Masanori Nishioka.

In the article, Nishioka wrote that “the story of 'gas chambers' was used as propaganda for the purposes of psychological warfare,” and is “nothing more than a transformation, without verification, of wartime 'gas chamber' stories into 'history'.”

Nishioka points out that a chamber at the Dachau concentration camp, which American propagandists portrayed as a “gas chamber” used to kill prisoners, was actually a non-homicidal delousing chamber. He also presents considerable evidence to show that the “gas chamber” shown to tourists at Auschwitz was built by Communists after the war.

Comparing the wartime fate of Europe's Jews with that of Chinese killed by Japanese troops, and the victims of American atomic bombings of Japanese cities, Nishioka concludes his article with an expression of sympathy for the “tragic deaths” of many European Jews.

Through its embassy in Tokyo, the Israeli government formally protested to the Japanese government, while the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles mounted a boycott campaign against the Bungei Shunju Company.

The magazine's initial response was a statement defending the provocative article. In explaining his decision to publish it, Marco Polo editor Kazuyoshi Hanada – one of Japan's most prominent journalists – said that Dr. Nishioka had found evidence to show that standard views about gassings of Jews are not accurate. “We would not run an article we thought was wrong,” Hanada said on Jan. 24. “It's not good for everything about a certain subject to be taboo,” he added. “Maybe Israelis and Japanese have different ways of thinking about that.”

Marco Polo also generously announced that it would welcome a rebuttal of Nishioka's article, offering both the Wiesenthal Center and the Israeli embassy an opportunity to respond with a ten-page article of its own. The offer was promptly and predictably rejected.

The Wiesenthal Center mounted an international boycott campaign against Marco Polo advertisers, and quickly succeeded in persuading major firms to cancel their advertising. On January 30, the Japanese government issued a statement calling the article, “extremely improper.” A Foreign Ministry official added that Japanese embassies and consulates around the world would be instructed about the government's “position on the Holocaust.”

Under extreme pressure, Bungei Shunju issued a statement of apology on Jan. 30, “We ran an article that was not fair to the Nazi massacre of Jewish people, and by running the article, we caused deep sorrow and hardship for Jewish society and related people.”

At a packed news conference on Feb. 2, with Wiesenthal Center deputy director Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Bungei company president Kengo Tanaka formally apologized for causing Jews “immeasurable pain” by publishing Nishioka's article. To atone for its grievous sin, Tanaka said he had closed don the offending magazine for good, and had relieved the responsible staff members of their duties. All remaining copies of the February issue were being recalled and destroyed.

Adapted from: The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. XV, No.2 March/April 1995 (P.O. Box 4296, Torrance, Ca 90510, USA.)