Mokusatsu

[14] In 1950, an argument emerged claiming that mokusatsu had been misunderstood by the Allies due to a mistranslation that interpreted the word to signify ignore rather than withhold comment.

The third edition of the authoritative Kenkyūsha Japanese-English dictionary (1954) responded by adding an innovative gloss to its former definitions[b] by stating that it also bore the meaning of 'remain in a wise and masterly inactivity'.

[16] The Allies were aware that within the Japanese government an attempt to reach a negotiated termination of hostilities had been underway, especially via diplomatic contacts with Moscow, which was still neutral.

Later that day in a press conference, the Premier Suzuki Kantarō himself publicly used it to dismiss the Potsdam Declaration as a mere rehash (yakinaoshi)[12] of earlier rejected Allied proposals, and therefore, being of no value.

The key part of the statement[c] was translated into English by Dōmei Press as "the Japanese government ignores this, and we are determined to continue our bitter fight to the end.

[22]Suzuki apparently recognized that the Potsdam declaration flagged an intention to end a war which, in logistical terms, Japan was no longer capable of sustaining.

However Article 6 stated that the militarists would be stripped of their authority and power forever, and the Japanese army was resolutely opposed to its own thorough dismantlement, and heavy pressure was brought to bear on the Prime Minister therefore to have him reject the declaration.

[23] Suzuki's stating that the declaration's terms would be literally "killed off by silent contempt" (mokusatsu) reflected this necessity of placating the extreme position of the army.

Historian John Toland also argued decades later that Suzuki's choice of the term was dictated more by the need to appease the military, which was hostile to the idea of "unconditional surrender", than to signal anything to the Allies.

Five years after the end of World War II, Kazuo Kawai, a lecturer in Far Eastern history at Stanford University, first raised the idea that an incorrect translation directly led to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Kawai argued that both the choice of this term and the meaning given to it by Allied authorities led to a fatal 'tragedy of errors' involving both Japanese bureaucratic bungling and a 'deficiency in perception' by Japan's enemies.