The 78-year-old has worked hard to improve relations with South Korea, as with all neighbours who suffered under Japanese imperialism.

ECONOMIST: Strained relations between Japan and South Korea

Ricardo Saludo's equation of Japanese imperialism with that of the Western powers may be politically correct, but is now an anachronism.

CNN: The Drugs Tide

But he also won many friends among Chinese, Korean, Filipino and other Asian Americans whose ancestral countries suffered under Japanese imperialism.

CNN

In addition, it might have seemed dangerous to have stories about contemporary strikes appear side-by-side with commemorations of the May 30th Movement that stress the problem of grueling working conditions in general in China in 1925 as well as Japanese imperialism in spurring people to action 85 years ago.

FORBES: The Chinese Strike At Honda

Nobody believes that Japanese are any more interested today than they ever were in the communists' ritual call for fighting "American imperialism" and ending "Japanese monopolistic capitalism" -- even if the country is only just emerging from an economic slowdown.

CNN: The Communists come back