The difference is that far more often than not, the Japan bigotry is institutional and found in places that would not be an old shame, but are newly erected edifices. See the Japanese Museum next to the Yasukuni Shrine's discussion of the Rape of Nanking, which says that the Japanese were essentially keeping the streets safe. Naw, they weren't slaughtering half the population and raping the other half, they were just stopping muggers, I guess...
And this, as well as the textbooks that minimize Japan's WWII crimes, have been put up in the last ten years. It ain't just some random comment in a manga.
I would have thought that modern Japanese were not as nationalistic or fascist as their warlord forefathers of 50+ years ago.