Tokyo Publisher Regrets ‘Pain’ to Jews : Holocaust: Executive holds news conference in bid to end furor over article denying Nazis operated gas chambers.

Moving to end the latest furor over anti-Semitism in Japan, the influential Bungei Shunju Ltd. apologized Thursday for causing the Jewish people “immeasurable pain” by publishing an article that denied the Nazis operated gas chambers during World War II.

At a packed news conference with representatives of the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles, Bungei President Kengo Tanaka noted that to atone for the article he had closed down the offending magazine, Marco Polo, and relieved the responsible staff members of their duties.

The article, titled “The Greatest Taboo of Postwar History: There Were No Nazi Gas Chambers,” was published just as Jews were commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland last week.

Bungei, one of the most respected publishers in Japan, was ignorant of Jewish history and believed that it was unveiling new facts in presenting the article, Tanaka said.

“We came to know of the very deep pain and agony inflicted by the Marco Polo article. . . . It was as if we were hit by an iron club in having our eyes opened,” he said.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center praised Tanaka’s action as “serious and unprecedented.”

He said he was calling off the economic boycott against Bungei, which resulted in Volkswagen, Cartier, Mitsubishi Motors and others canceling their advertising.

The article’s publication is one of an escalating number of anti-Semitic incidents reported around the world, Jewish organizations say.

Cooper said hate crimes against Jews in the United States have increased. The Polish airline LOT’s in-flight magazine recently published an advertisement showing a caricature of a Jew holding a fistful of bank notes, while a Spanish airline magazine published an article about a festival in Spain that symbolically persecutes two villagers dressed as Jews.

In Japan, Jewish organizations have repeatedly protested such incidents as a Liberal Democratic Party official’s use of Adolf Hitler’s writings last year for a campaign manual and advertisements for books alleging a Jewish financial conspiracy, carried by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a respected financial daily.

Cooper expressed concern and puzzlement over the appearance of such writings in a nation with no history of extensive contact with Jews. There are only 1,000 to 2,000 Jews in Japan, and there is a virtual absence of hate crimes against them. Cooper said he feels safer here than any place besides Israel.

Nearly 5 million copies of Anne Frank’s “Diary of a Young Girl” have been sold here--published in Japanese by Bungei, as Tanaka noted in his apology Thursday. And a May exhibit on the Holocaust drew 80,000 people in the first 10 days.

Yet books alleging a Jewish conspiracy to control the world’s economy also seem to sell.

At the Sanseido bookstore in Tokyo, for instance, such books as “The Jewish Strategy to Conquer the World, Part III” and “From Rockefeller to Rothschild: Secret of a Giant Conglomerate” line shelves alongside serious historical works on politics and foreign policy.

The books have increased in popularity with the declining Japanese economy--beginning with the Plaza Accord in the mid-1980s, which drastically boosted the yen’s value and eroded Japan’s international competitiveness, one publisher said.

“After the bubble,” he said, referring to the period of soaring stock and land values in the late 1980s, “no one can see the future. People are frustrated with the economic situation. Jews are known to be very strong in finance, so Japanese have become interested in Jews.”

The publisher criticized Bungei’s decision to close Marco Polo, saying it denies the public the right to hear another point of view--a criticism leveled by the article’s author himself, Masanori Nishioka, in a news conference Wednesday.

“Marco Polo was crushed by Jewish organizations using advertising, and Bungei obliged,” he charged. “They crushed room for debate.”

Cooper, in responding to similar comments at the news conference, said the center never asked Bungei to close the magazine.

Tanaka said he would have closed the magazine--a glossy with a circulation of 200,000 aimed at men in their 20s and 30s--even without the boycott.

Bungei has had to issue two other apologies in the last two years: to the Imperial Family and Japan Railways East for inaccurate reporting.