WIESENTHAL CENTER URGES MAJOR JAPANESE CHAIN TO STOP SALES OF BOOK PROMOTING NEGATIVE JEWISH STEREOTYPES

The Simon Wiesenthal Center today urged the Tokyo-based Lawson’s chain of stores to remove from their shelves, copies of Yudaya No Seikousha Ga Oshieru Ookanemochi Ni Nara Hito No Houteishike (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 Takeshi Niinami, CEO of Lawson K.K., Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center 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."

In a related development, the Wiesenthal Center is also protesting to the Bungei Shunju for running an advertisement for the Yudaya book in its current Shukan Bunshun magazine. "The acceptance of such an ad by the Bungei Shunju is a violation of the commitment this company made to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in 1995 to desist from publishing or promoting any antisemitic material," Cooper said. In January of that year, 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 closed its Marco Polo publication.

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.