"I think of the sufferings your people underwent during this unfortunate period, which was brought about by my country, and cannot but feel the deepest regret," the 56-year-old Emperor told the visiting South Korean President, Roh Tae Woo, at a state banquet.
How could we move forward from this unfortunate period in the group's history?
A no-show would have given the finger to the American-led international order.Now, both sides talk of putting the unfortunate period behind them, stressing the need to look to the future.
Doncaster's vice-chairman, Alan Smart, said: "It's an unfortunate period in this proud club's history, a very emotional time for all.
"What is very unfortunate is that history has revealed American complicity in serious atrocities in the 1980s and, in effect, all these nominations may serve to rewrite history and rehabilitate a very unfortunate period of our history".
Until recently conventional histories of architecture treated the 19th century as an unfortunate period in which historicist architects needlessly obstructed the path to a new architecture based on technology and engineering.
He has spent his life in a neighborhood no bigger than roughly nine blocks from end to end, except for that brief, unfortunate period years ago when he and his wife moved to Lakewood, N.J.
Like the Muslim prophet, the rapacious industrialist, the officious state bureaucrat and the interfering Fabian intellectual, the Alien Jew (treated as the personification of a locally destructive international financial system) is not just an unfortunate "period" detail.
And these crusts, which are best made with a combination of lard and butter, went through an unfortunate period during which people considered hard vegetable fat, like margarine or Crisco, a desirable ingredient.
They're all talking and moving around like people you could well be having dinner with later (if you wouldn't object to being seen with companions in off-the-peg clothes from the 1970's, a highly unfortunate period for fashion).
The phrasing was a departure from the more circumscribed locutions used by the Emperor's father, Hirohito, who in remarks addressed to the United States and China referred to the war years as a "regrettable" or "unfortunate" period but stopped short of acknowledging any specific Japanese responsibility.
