NANJING - A Chinese historian has criticised a Japanese hotel for placing in its rooms a book denying the Nanjing Massacre and the forced recruitment of comfort women.

In response to the incident, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying on Tuesday urged the Japanese government to ensure that Japanese people are exposed to authoritative versions of history.

Despite the protest, the APA hotel chain has refused to remove "The Real History of Japan" by Seiji Fuji, the pen name of the hotel CEO, from its rooms.

Zhang Jianjun, chief researcher with the Nanjing Massacre research institute, said the book is a fabrication based on the rhetoric of the Japanese right-wing.

Nanjing was home to more than 600,000 people before the slaughter of around 300,000 soldiers and civilians in December 1937, but the book claims that there were only 200,000 people in the city at the time.

In addition, the book said there are no eyewitness accounts of the massacre by either Chinese or Japanese observers, despite the existence of a plethora of diaries, letters and photographs.

"It is nonsense," said Zhang, curator of the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.

More than 20 people from Europe and the United States recorded the atrocities and their documents have been preserved by UNESCO in its Memory of the World Register, Zhang said.

"The book portraits Japan as the victim of the war. The attempt to whitewash its role as the invader confuses right and wrong," Zhang said.