Chinese media accuses Japanese of "orgy"

Startling story on an incident in China in which a group of 400 male Japanese tourists supposedly engaged in prostitution with 500 Chinese girls in a hotel, reported by the BBC
and in Japanese by Asahi.com:

The 400 or so men, aged between 16 and 37, flew into Zhuhai city in southern Guangdong province expressly for sex at the five-star hotel, according to the media reports.

On one of the nights the men are said to have had nearly 500 girls brought to serve them.

The incident, at a time when Chinese resentment against Japan is already very high, has prompted thousands of angry messages to be posted on the internet by Chinese users.

Many see it as a deliberate attempt to humiliate Chinese pride because it took place on the anniversary of Japan's occupation of north-east China.

It does look like the BBC is quoting verbatim from fairly sensationalised Chinese media accounts without attempting to verify them, though. Notwithstanding the influence of national pride on its reporting, the Asahi gives a different slant, suggesting that this was a once-a-year trip organised by one or more companies for their employees, and that while there were Chinese girls acting as hostesses at a company function in the evening, there was none of the mass exodus upstairs with them that the Chinese reports suggests; for a start, the Japanese guests were staying at another hotel. It also notes that the Chinese reports appear to be based on the story of a witness who arrived at the hotel late in the evening slap bang in the middle of this epic debauch. Given that corporate booze-ups in Japan are apt to degenerate into all sorts of mayhem, one can imagine the scene that confronted him; and it would certainly be in character for some of the more unreconstructed elements to start mauling the help, so the story probably has some foundation in fact. However, the spin on it as a massive group of sexual tourists seems to be opportunistic, a chance to score points.

Nevertheless, even mauling the help is a habit that it would be good to get out of.