The four-minute speech that has reverberated throughout Japan’s modern history since it was delivered by Japanese emperor Hirohito at the end of World War II has come back to life in digital form.
Hirohito’s “jewel voice” — muffled and nearly inaudible due to poor sound quality — was broadcast on Aug. 15, 1945, announcing Japan’s surrender. Yesterday the Imperial Household Agency released the digital version of the original sound ahead of the 70th anniversary of the speech and the war’s end. In it, the emperor’s voice appears clearer, slightly higher and more intense, but Japanese today would still have trouble understanding the arcane language used by Hirohito.
“The language was extremely difficult,” Tomie Kondo, 92, said, who listened to the 1945 broadcast in a monitoring room at NHK public broadcaster, where she worked as a newscaster.
Photo: AFP
“It’s well written if you read it, but I’m afraid not many people understood what he said,” she said. Poor reception and sound quality of the radio made it even worse. “I heard some people even thought they were supposed to fight even more,” she said. “I think the speech would be incomprehensible to young people today.”
Many Japanese know the part of the speech when Hirohito refers to his resolve for peace by “enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable,” a phrase repeatedly used in news and dramas about the war.
When people heard that part 70 years ago, they understood the situation, Kondo said, but the rest is little known, largely because the text Hirohito read was deliberately written in arcane language making him sound authoritative and convincing as he sought people’s understanding about Japan’s surrender.
PACIFIST EMBRACE
Amid growing concern among many Japanese over nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push to expand Japan’s military role, the current emperor, Akihito, is increasingly seen as liberal and pacifist and the effort by his father, Hirohito, to end the war has captured national attention.
Speaking in unique intonation that drops at the end of sentences, Hirohito opens his 1945 address with Japan’s decision to accept the condition of surrender. He also expresses “the deepest sense of regret” to Asian countries that cooperated with Japan to gain “emancipation” from Western colonization.
Hirohito also laments devastation caused by “a new and most cruel bomb” dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and asks everyone to stay calm while helping to reconstruct the country.
Its significance is that Hirohito, who at the time was considered a living deity, made the address, Tokyo’s Nihon University historian Takahisa Furukawa said.
“What’s most important is the emperor reached out to the people to tell them that they had to surrender and end the war,” he said. “The speech is a reminder of what it took to end the wrong war.”
On the eve of the announcement, Hirohito met with top government officials to approve Japan’s surrender inside a bunker dug at the palace compound.
Amid fear of violent protest by army officials refusing to end the war, the recording of Hirohito’s announcement was made secretly. NHK technicians were quietly called in for the recording. At almost midnight, Hirohito appeared in his formal military uniform and read the statement into the microphone, twice.
A group of young army officers stormed into the palace in a failed attempt to steal the records and block the surrender speech, but palace officials desperately protected the records, which were safely delivered to NHK for radio transmission the next day.
The drama of the last two days of the war leading to Hirohito’s radio address was made into a film, Japan’s Longest Day, in 1967 and its remake is to be released in Japanese theaters on Aug. 8.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS