Word: rescript
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Imperial appearance highlighted a day of strange contrasts. In the morning Hirohito, in an ancient Shinto ceremony at the palace shrine, reported the promulgation to the souls of his ancestors. Later he drove (in a handsome, black Mercedes-Benz with maroon trim) to the Diet to read his Imperial Rescript in high-pitched, colloquial Japanese. At the palace celebration, Hirohito emerged in an open horse-drawn carriage...
...Frank Kluckhohn of the New York Times and Hugh Baillie of United Press (see PRESS). He asked them some questions, wished them well, and answered their own questions in writing. If he was making propaganda, he did it gracefully. He said that Tojo had abused the imperial war rescript in the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor; he hoped that Japan would become a democratic constitutional monarchy somewhat like Britain's (Japan has had a constitution of sorts since...
...Shock of Defeat. Never was a nation so ill-prepared for defeat. A Domei broadcast admitted that the Emperor's rescript came as a shock to a people who had been cut off from true military and political news of the outside world. Official statements and Tokyo broadcasts foreshadowed some of the Jap attitudes with which MacArthur must deal...
Self-Reproach. Next day Hirohito broadcast an Imperial Rescript to his nation: "Despite the best that has been done by everyone . . . the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage. . . . Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb. . . . We have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering the insufferable...
...second school of thought abruptly dismisses the idea that the Emperor can ever be used to further democracy in Japan. Even a divine Rescript cannot bridge the gulf that separates western political liberalism from Shinto totalitarianism...