Oh, Kawamura-san...

...what would we do without you for entertainment?

I have not been respectful of Nagoya Mayor Kawamura Takashi, calling him "a buffoon" and "nuts" (the latter of which was only last Wednesday). Honestly, do the words "serious" and "mature" come to mind when you see his home page?

So surprised should no one be about this:

Nagoya mayor denies Nanjing Massacre occurred, drawing fire from China
Kyodo
NAGOYA -- Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura on Monday told a visiting official from Nanjing, China that he doubts a massacre of civilians by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers occurred in Nanjing in 1937 during the Sino-Japanese war, immediately drawing fire from China.

The 63-year-old Nagoya mayor, whose father was in Nanjing when the war ended in 1945, told Liu Zhiwei, a member of the Chinese Communist Party's Nanjing City Standing Committee, he believes that only "conventional acts of combat" took place there, not mass murder and rape of civilians.

"Why were people in Nanjing kind to Japanese soldiers only eight years after the incident?" Kawamura asked, referring to his father's experience. "I could go to Nanjing and attend a debate on the history of the city, if necessary," he said....

(Link)

That Nanjing and Nagoya have a sister-city relationship just makes Kawamura's brain flatulence all the more inappropriate.