Mokusatsu

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Mokusatsu (黙殺) is a Japanese word formed from two Chinese characters: "silence" (moku, 黙) and "kill" (satsu, 殺) and means the act of keeping a contemptuous silence. Some argue that the word was misinterpreted by the United States when the government of Japan used it as a response to American demands for unconditional surrender in World War II, which may have influenced President Harry S. Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.^[1]

The word was employed in the morning edition of the Asahi Shinbun during World War II on July 28, 1945 to designate the attitude assumed by the government to the Potsdam Declaration. Later that day in a press conference, it was used by the Premier Suzuki Kantaro to dismiss the Potsdam Declarations as a mere rehash of earlier rejected Allied proposals, and therefore, being of no value, would be killed off by silent contempt (mokusatsu). Suzuki's choice of the term was dictated perhaps more by the need to appease the military, which was hostile to the idea of "unconditional surrender", than to signal anything to the Allies.^[1]

The expression can also mean to just let a topic or subject die by refusing to follow up on it. The reasons for the "mokusatsu" response could as easily be contempt as embarrassment, discomfort, or even simply not knowing what else to do in response.

The NSA Technical Journal has an article on the word^[2] in which readers are warned of the consequences of not making clear ambiguity when translating between languages. It concludes:

Some years ago I recall hearing a statement known as "Murphy's Law" which says that "If it can be misunderstood, it will be." Mokusatsu supplies adequate proof of that statement. After all, if Kantaro Suzuki had said something specific like "I will have a statement after the cabinet meeting," or "We have not reached any decision yet," he could have avoided the problem of how to translate the ambiguous word mokusatsu and the two horrible consequences of its inauspicious translation: the atomic bombs and this essay.

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[edit] References

• Toland, John (2003 (1970)). The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945. New York: The Modern Library. ISBN 0-8129-6858-1.