HOW quickly things can change in just a generation.

Yesterday Kevin Rudd had an audience with Japan's Emperor Akihito. Only a generation ago, his father Albert, a digger, was fighting the Japanese in Borneo and elsewhere.

Mr Rudd was not born when the war ended. Akihito was 14. His father, the Emperor Hirohito, had had supreme command of the Japanese.

Despite this familial link, it would have been highly impolitic to mention the war. So yesterday the men kept things formal and, said Mr Rudd, "reflected on the long and positive history in our bilateral relationship".

Emperor Akihito was a prince when he last visited Australia, in 1973 at the invitation of Gough Whitlam.

Mr Rudd formally extended another invitation for the Emperor and the Empress Michiko to visit.

Before Mr Rudd visited the Imperial Palace he received a rock star welcome at the Akabane Elementary School where he went to observe Japanese children conversing by mail with Australian children in country Victoria. They were using translation software jointly developed by both countries.

Mr Rudd said it was "making Australia into the most Asia-literate country in the collective West".

Phillip Coorey