Cabinet Approval of the Surrender Rescript (August 14, 1945)

On the morning of August 14, 1945, at an Imperial Conference, Emperor Hirohito again gave his decision to accept the Potsdam Declaration and said he was willing to address the nation himself if necessary. A draft rescript announcing the end of the war had already been outlined by Chief Cabinet Secretary Sakomizu Hisatsune, drafted by the Sinologist and cabinet adviser Kawada Mizuho, and revised on the 14th by Yasuoka Masahiro, adviser to the Greater East Asia Ministry.

The meeting of the Suzuki Kantaro Cabinet held that day at the Prime Minister's Official Residence was one of the most consequential in Japanese history. With several recesses, ministers debated each phrase of the surrender rescript, with multiple amendments proposed and deliberated and a series of successive drafts produced. The best-known change was made at the request of War Minister Anami Korechika, who had the phrase 'the war situation grows worse by the day' altered to 'the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage', so as not to imply that earlier war reports had been false. Because time was short, Sano Komonta — a Cabinet official with the rank of rijikan (内閣理事官), not a Cabinet Secretary — began preparing the official promulgation copy (公布原本) while the meeting was still in progress; according to the National Archives of Japan, this fair copying would normally have started only after the Cabinet decision. The wording continued to change, and with no time to rewrite the document the paper was scraped and written over, and missing characters were inserted by Sato Asao, head of the Cabinet Secretariat's general affairs section. These erasures and insertions remain visible on the original.

The final text was approved at approximately 11:00 PM. Dated 14 August 1945, the rescript bears the Emperor's sign-manual and seal and the signatures of all Cabinet ministers, among them Prime Minister Suzuki, Navy Minister Yonai Mitsumasa, War Minister Anami and Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori. It was promulgated in an extra edition of the Official Gazette, and the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration was communicated to the Allies through Switzerland and Sweden. According to the official annals of the Showa Emperor, the Emperor entered the recording room in the Imperial Household Ministry at 11:25 PM, during an air-raid alert, to record the rescript for broadcast at noon the next day.

The original rescript is held by the National Archives of Japan in Kitanomaru Park, Chiyoda, Tokyo, which has placed it on special display to mark 15 August; the drafts of the rescript and of the accompanying Cabinet proclamation are also preserved among its records. The former Official Residence where the Cabinet met was later relocated and now serves as the Prime Minister's living quarters.