I recently stumbled upon a YouTube recording — actually, two — of the Showa Emperor telling his subjects over the radio that Japan was accepting defeat. The first one I heard was what appeared to be a cleaned-up version; the second was the one with static, bits of which I had heard before. This was, at any rate, the first time I heard the Aug. 15, 1945, address in its entirety.
Listening, I remembered New York Times columnist Paul Krugman not long ago quoting a sentence from it. That, in turn, brought to mind the drafting of the speech and its revision during which that sentence came into being. It reads: "The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage."
No, Krugman wasn't talking about the Emperor's war responsibility or anything of the sort. The liberal economist quoted the sentence to twit Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke for a "Hirohito feel," for making a "locking-the-barn-door-after- the-horse-is-gone decision" on the U.S. mortgage industry ("Blindly into the Bubble," Dec. 21, 2007).