MAJOR JAPANESE CHAIN REMOVES BOOK PROMOTING NEGATIVE JEWISH STEREOTYPES

The Simon Wiesenthal Center commended the Tokyo-based Lawson's chain of stores for stopping the sale of Yudaya No Seikousha Ga Oshieru Ookanemochi Ni Naru Hito No Houteishiki (A Successful Jew Teaches the Method for Becoming Fabulously Rich), a book labeled by the Jewish community in Japan as a complete fraud.

In his letter to Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Takeshi Niinami, CEO of Lawson, Inc. said, "Our company is opposed to all forms of discrimination...including on the basis of race, religion or ethnic background... We have taken action to cease all sales of the...book."

The Center's original protest said, in part: "The publisher, [of this book] Nihon Bungeisha has in the past years issued, and continues to issue, numerous titles that are highly offensive and defamatory to the Jewish people…. This current work fosters a stereotyped image of Jews to many young Japanese. We urge your company to review the contents of this work and to permanently remove it from the shelves of all Lawson outlets."

The Wiesenthal Center has often criticized Japanese companies for selling or promoting antisemitic books and themes. The most notorious example was in 1995 when a prominent Japanese magazine, Marco Polo, ran a cover story that denied that any Jews were murdered in the gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp during the World War II Nazi Holocaust. As a result of a worldwide protest led by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Bungei Shunju. the magazine's publisher, closed Marco Polo.

Rabbi Cooper has visited Japan many times on behalf of the Wiesenthal Center to discuss the issue of Japanese antisemitism.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, and the Council of Europe.

VISUALS OF THE YUDAYA BOOK COVER ARE AVAILABLE FROM THE CENTER.

For more information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036, or visit www.wiesenthal.com.