The spokesperson was named Mamizu Kazuhata, and he was the secretary-general of the cabinet of Suzuki Kantaro before the end of World War II. He served as the postal minister of Ikeda Yuto's cabinet for the second time. In his later years, he wrote his experience during World War

"The original case or draft of the final battle edict is me. Why is it that I wrote it? Because this is my job."

The spokesperson is called Mamizu Kuta (1902-1977), and he was the secretary-general of the cabinet of Suzuki Kantaro before the end of World War II. After the war, he entered politics again and served as the postal minister of Ikeda Yuto's cabinet for the second time. In his later years, he wrote his experience during World War II as "The Prime Minister's Residence Under Machine Guns", which became a very important first-hand historical material.

Original edict of Emperor Showa's signature

Infected by the Japanese novel "The Longest Day in Japan" and related film and television dramas, when talking about the issue of surrender in World War II, most of the eyes were focused on the every move of Emperor Showa, Kantaro Suzuki and others. Many people would also sigh at the Lu Xiang Anan Weiji who committed suicide by raising a knife, and sighed at the lower-level army generals who were unwilling to surrender at the last moment. But few people pay attention to it. The Execution of Emperor Showa's war, which often appears in World War II documentaries, is actually quite meaningful. When "Chi Yin" is played, it conveys not only the opinions of Emperor , but also what the entire Japanese senior politicians and bureaucrats want to say to ordinary people.

Mifune Toshiro committed suicide by lifting his knife. Stills from "The Longest Day in Japan"

· First draft: August 10, which was a long time ago,

At 11:50 on August 9, 1945, Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki organized five other senior officials to form the "Supreme War Guidance Conference" and gathered in the air defense fortifications at the bottom of the Kusaka Imperial Garden in the palace fortification. Six people argued for two hours over whether Japan accepted the " Potsdam Proclamation " and surrendered to the Allied forces, but the result was that three people agreed and three people opposed.

博平台

Then, based on the opinions of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Emperor Showa expressed his opinions to everyone present: "The day before yesterday, he heard from the Chief of Staff to the Chief of Staff to listen to the defense measures of Jiujiu Rihama, but it was completely different from the report of the attendant attendant inspecting the front line. The military said that the equipment was complete, but in fact some soldiers were not worthy of bayonets. What would happen if this state of entering the local decisive battle? I am really worried... In order to pass on the country of Japan to the descendants, we can only allow more people to survive as much as possible... In order to save the entire nation and to maintain the country, we can only endure those unbearable things."

According to the Emperor Showa's recollection, when he recounted this passage, he spoke very slowly, "it took five times more time than ordinary people." When the emperor receives royal education, he naturally needs to learn a kind of acting skill that is not alarmed when Mount Tai collapses before the collapse. The slower he speaks, the more he is actually covering up his nervousness. Because of this, the forced water used as a record can't help but feel very anxious.

The Showa Emperor's family when the Pacific War began in 1941

After the record was completed, the manhumizu often needed to convert this colloquial text into the official Japanese written language at that time. After summary, he decided to extract three most important words from the Emperor's speech: the first is to convey the emperor's mood about "tolerating unbearable things" to the people, so he wrote "I am with you"; the second is to prevent ordinary people from causing various incidents after the war, he wrote "It is my best warning to breed troubles"; the third is to give the people the confidence to rebuild Japan, so he has the saying "confirm that China is immortal." Of course, in order to avoid post-war trials, the edict could not contain any evidence that "the emperor has the responsibility for war", and he also wrote the saying "Destruction of sovereignty of other countries and invading territory is not my will."

But for a long time, the most important beginning of the edict is extremely difficult to write. In what manner should Emperor Showa appear in front of the people? How should we announce the end of the war so that the Japanese people will not be panicked? Since the decision to surrender in the early morning of August 10, Mai Shui often spent two full hours thinking about this issue, and finally decided to deal with it in a vague way.

Truman announced the Potsdam Proclamation

"I deeply understand the general trend of the world and the current situation of the empire, and I am willing to take extraordinary measures to clean up the current situation. I will tell you and other loyal and good people.On behalf of the imperial government, I issued a notice to accept the joint declarations of the United States and Britain, the Chongqing regime and the Soviet Union.

This passage is very confusing. For European and American countries, of course, they know that the "common declaration" refers to the "Potsdam Proclamation"; however, ordinary Japanese people do not know what the "common declaration" is. The only thing they can understand is that the emperor takes into account the "general trend of the world and the current situation of the empire" and wants to "clean up the current situation" and end the war. As long as the people avoid talking about the word "unconditional surrender", the degree of panic will decrease. When many soldiers who swear to surrender to death will hear this, they will also think that the emperor "actively" stops the war after careful consideration, rather than passively surrender.

On the morning of August 11, the first draft of the edict was completed, and Masakusui immediately found two young bureaucrats, Tsukio Kihara and Ikkawa Ogawa, to come to the cabinet to give suggestions. After reading the two, their first reaction was to say dissatisfied, "It's time now, and he said that he is sure that China is immortal. Is it a bit over?" "Mashui Jiu often mentioned: "This is the most important thing. Even if you lose the war, Japan will never disappear. This must be emphasized now. ”

In other words, for the Showa bureaucrats at that time, the problem they thought was not only the defeat and surrender itself, but more importantly, how to make the people accept the defeat results in a calm way. In this context, the first public speech released by Emperor Showa would inevitably become a key ritual to stabilize the morale of the army and inspire the people. Therefore, the writing must also be as majestic as the emperor. For this reason, after the first draft of the edict was drafted, Mai Mizuki often found two sinologists to modify the writing.

· Sinologists' polishing

The reason for finding a sinologist was that the Japanese edicts at that time had to adopt the "textual style", that is, a style of edicts specially used for edicts and official documents transformed based on classical Japanese. It was extremely complicated and had to be proficient in ancient Japanese and Chinese. Even those who had studied the "Four Books and Five Classics" in their youth were difficult to write. Therefore, the Japanese cabinet also had a "cabinet instructor" position specifically responsible for the edicts. At this time, the Sinologist Kawada Misui (1879-1951) helped the cabinet draft various edicts during the Pacific War.

Kawada Misui compiled the Chinese poetry work "Poetry Collection"

In response to the first draft of the long-term force of water, Kawada Ruiho made some adjustments. First, "I hope to ensure eternal peace." Kawada Ruiho believes that this paragraph draws on the motto of "establishing a heart for heaven and earth, establishing a destiny for the people, inheriting unique knowledge for the past, and opening peace for all generations". It is better to directly change it to "to open peace for all generations"; second, "the undead dead who died in battle formations and their families who died in their duties will be heartbroken every time they think of it." Another Sinologist, Masato Yasuoka, believed that the use of "heartbroken" is more like a description of the pain of parting with his family, so it is changed to "five internal divisions". Both changes are quoted from classics, adding literary talent to the edict.

Just as Kawada Ruiho helped to revise the draft of the edict, the cabinet suddenly welcomed an uninvited guest: another bureaucrat with good academic literacy and the deputy official of the Greater East Asia Province (1896-1975).

Tajiri Aiyi

Theoretically, the draft of the edict during this period should be considered a state secret, but in the case of Tokyo being bombed one after another, the government operation was almost paralyzed, and the so-called confidentiality depends entirely on personal consciousness. It happened that the water was for a long time and needed other people to help with the text of the text. When I saw Aiyi Tajiri, I said to him: "You are here just right, come and read it and give me some advice."

After reading it a few times, Ai Yoshi Tajiri shook his head and pointed out one of the important issues: there was a "protecting national system " in the entire edict, which "it's really untouchable."

The so-called "protecting till the state system" is actually a politically correct language in Japan in the early Showa period. In the earlier Taisho era (1912-1926), a view called "the emperor's agency theory" was popular in Japan, that is, "the emperor" itself is not a concrete symbol of the concept of state, nor is it the source of power, but a "organization" (ruling agency) under the constitution.However, as the militarist atmosphere became more and more serious, the "Emperor's Agency" was attacked strongly. Finally, in 1935, the House of Representatives issued the "National System Mingzheng Statement", clearly defining Japan as "Eternal Emperor's Kingdom", and Japan also embarked on the road of war. Since then, "Protecting the National Sports" has become a slogan shouted by the military and the civilian right-wing. The appearance of these four words will also make liberals disgusted.

The proposer of the emperor's agency, Minobe Daji, professor of law at the Imperial University of Tokyo, happens to be a liberal bureaucrat in a relatively sense, opposes Japan's support for Puyi and Wang Jingwei, and submits his resignation because Japan launched the Pacific War. In May 1945, when he was about to lose, he served as the second-rank officer in the colonial management department of Greater East Asia. However, since most of the colonies had been captured, he also publicly proposed in the department that "defeat is a matter of time, and the whole province should study post-war countermeasures in detail."

Photo of Emperor Showa's military parade in 1938. During World War II, Japanese media's majestic image of the Emperor riding a horse was heavy ink

The reason why the word "protecting the national system" was written in a long time was to appease the emotions of ordinary soldiers. However, for consideration of "post-war countermeasures", Ai Yoshi Tajiri did not believe that he should "protect the national system". After all, the reason why Japan was defeated in the war was the root cause of this "national system". As for the abolition of the emperor's system, it had also been written before, "I am with your subjects", which means that the emperor will rebuild the country with the Japanese people: "The so-called national system...the most important thing should be 'the unity of the monarch and the subject', which is the essence of the national system."

This suggestion was accepted for a long time, but later at the cabinet meeting, because the army insisted on "protecting the national sports", the Japanese government finally made a compromise: that is, "protecting the national sports" to restore it in another place, and then add "promoting the essence of the national sports" to the end part. It can not only satisfy the psychological demands of Showa soldiers, but also allow the edict to better guide the development of the future era.

· Cabinet review: Several major changes

On the evening of August 13, the draft for review of the edict came to the cabinet, and all cabinet members began to comment on the document that the Japanese Empire announced its surrender.

Anan Weiji

The most popular one is Army Minister Anan Weiji (1887-1945). As the highest representative of millions of army soldiers in the cabinet, Anan Weiji kept shouting in Showa that he should "a decisive battle in the local area". Now is he willing to agree to this edict, and will he obstruct the issuance of the edict in various ways?

According to Mai Mizukao speculation, Anan Weiji himself still hopes to help Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki toward a truce: if he is really unwilling to surrender, he can resign directly and no longer send Army ministers to the cabinet, which will cause the Suzuki cabinet to collapse directly; on the contrary, he did not do so, but only shouted "local decisive battle" on the surface, which may be the purpose of suppressing the army soldiers at the bottom who want to stop the truce.

Sure enough, at the entire cabinet meeting, Anan Weiji only had objections to the description of the situation in the draft edict.

How to describe the battle situation at that time, it is a long time to force the water to be forced to do so. The earliest he wrote was "The end of the war is not yet reached", and later it was modified to "the war situation is gradually falling into bad shape", while after modification by two sinologists, it became "the war situation is getting worse". Overall, the three revisions, from tactful to straightforward, all mean to tell the people: the ceasefire is because it is impossible to fight.

At the cabinet meeting, Anan Weiji proposed that this description was too light and should be further changed to "the situation of war cannot improve", directly blocking the lower-level soldiers and having a trace of fantasy about "turning defeat into victory". This also shows that he is probably as strong as the water has long been long speculating later that he is trying his best to help Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki promote the truce.

After passing the Anan Weiji level, the cabinet's rural business minister Tadashi Ishiguro set his sights on the sentence "(I) often use magical artifacts and are with your subjects": "The general public in the United States speculates that the emperor has mysterious power. If it is written like this, they may think that the emperor's mysterious power comes from magical artifacts. Then once (US military) lands in Japan, it is likely to bring unnecessary disasters to the magical artifacts."

Schematic diagram of the three artifacts

The so-called "artifact" refers to the mirror (eight-foot mirror), sword (Casa pheasant sword), and jade (Yasaka Qiongquyu). It is said that they are three artifacts left by the Japanese Emperor Shenwu when the founding of the country. According to traditional Japanese concepts, the three artifacts are symbols of the throne and the orthodox nature of the emperor. During the Japanese Northern and Southern Dynasties (1336-1391), since the Southern Dynasties had always possessed three magical artifacts, the emperor's lineage list after the Meiji always regarded the Southern Dynasties as orthodox, and although the five emperors of the Northern Dynasties were the ancestors of Emperor Meiji, they were still excluded from orthodox.

But in the final analysis, "Pengling the Divine Artifact" is just a habitual expression in the traditional context. If Americans really believe it and confiscate the Divine Artifact, then the situation of the Japanese Emperor will be very embarrassing. So after Tadashi Ishiguro raised objections, the cabinet meeting immediately deleted the sentence.

In addition, Japan's attitude towards war was also reflected in the edict. In the earliest version of "The East Asian allies are in conflict with their ambitions and have to apologize", this is an obvious tone of apology; but after the modification of the sinologists, "apologize" became an incomprehensible "sadness". At the cabinet meeting, the audience thought that this statement was still a bit too much, so they simply changed it to "regret". This change in the language system also laid the groundwork for Japan's subsequent evasive words on the issue of war responsibility.

· Ending

At noon on August 15, the recording of Emperor Showa's speech was played to Japanese citizens as scheduled.

What is ridiculous is that in the face of the edict written entirely from "literary style" and the technical problems of semiconductor playback equipment, most Japanese "subjects" did not understand what their Emperor Emperor was talking about. Fortunately, the Japanese Broadcasting Association (NHK) then explained the emperor's speech, and the Japanese citizens finally understood: it turned out to be surrender.

Although I didn't fully understand, the simple and easy-to-understand sentence in the edict, "It's unbearable to endure, and tolerate peace for all ages" was also known to ordinary Japanese people in the future, and in the dark, this also became the main line of Japan's post-war development.