Japan’s largest hotel chain, an explosively revisionist history book left out for guests, a Chinese boycott and a brazenly defiant chief executive with a passion for lurid hats. One of the more dependable features of Japan, remarked a senior Tokyo-based diplomat last week, is never knowing for sure where the next nationalism-fuelled row will erupt, but being quite certain that one will somewhere.

The puzzle, say political scientists, is whether these are merely symptoms of an instinctive nationalism that has never been far from Japan’s surface but is unlikely to spiral much beyond that level, or of an active swing to the right brought about by the rise of China and the popularity of Japan’s rightwing prime minister, Shinzo Abe.

In common with others over the years — including prime ministerial visits to the controversial Yasukuni war shrine — the furore surrounding the APA hotel chain has escalated quickly and toxically. Last week, the company was forced to explain why it was furnishing its rooms with a book, penned under a pseudonym by the founder, that argues the 1937 massacre of Chinese soldiers and civilians was “a fabrication”.