Talk:Mokusatsu

link

Here's a google search to back support the article. I first came across this in an NHK/CBC docudrama entitled "Hiroshima". The four-hour documentary mixed a dramatic presentation, period news footage, and recent interviews with Hiroshima bomb survivors.

NHK did not broadcast the production as originally schedule, because of the taboo surrounding the imperial family and of the controversy surrounding the Showa emperor (Hirohito) who figures prominently in the film. Mom sent me a tape of it five years ago or so, and I finallty saw it on NHK in August 2003, but broadcast at 2:00 AM. Vincent 04:15, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

2007-02-8 Automated pywikipediabot message

--CopyToWiktionaryBot 07:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

This article is very unclear

In what way was the word misinterpreted? From my read it sounds like the Allies understood perfectly what was meant by it: that their proposition was being ignored by Japan. The way the article reads it sounds more like the press and the Premier might have misspoken when using this word, sending the wrong message. If that's not the case then how it was misinterpreted needs to be made much more clear, it's not at all obvious now. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:18, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

The NSA article claims an alternate meaning of, 'to remain in a wise and masterly inactivity', and suggests that this may not have been the Japanese government's response to Potsdam, but Suzuki's own response to the reporter, saying in effect, 'No comment.' Another possible meaning I've heard is in relation to a business negotiation, wherein one side, having received the other sides offer, sits quietly and considers it, and sees if the first party has more to say. 71.189.63.114 (talk) 08:06, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

It is part of popular history of the event that the word chosen was deliberately subtle and open to interpretation. One reading is "silent contempt," or a hard "no". Another is that of polite ignorance, leaving the door open for future offers. In one popular film of events (I forget the name), a translator describes this sort of thing to Truman with an example of a man trying to buy the shoes off another man's feet: the first man bids too low, but -- rather than insult him by shooting down the offer -- the second man simply pretends he has said nothing until the first man realizes from the lack of response that he has simply started too low. Historically, the issue was whether the Japanese were saying "we refuse any surrender" (which placates the generals) or "we are open to conditional surrender" (leaving the door open for diplomacy) or whether they were trying to buy time by walking the thin line between the two.

This article seems to take the position that word was chosen to placate the generals and public, not so much to leave the door open with the Americans, but it does a poor job of framing the issue. I would recommend a section on the Response to the Potsdam Declaration, rather than muddle information on the response and the word in-of-itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.193.122.3 (talk) 23:21, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Potsdam Declaration "being transmitted to the Japanese government diplomatically via Swiss intermediaries" - is it true?

The article claims that the Potsdam declaration was "transmitted to the Japanese government diplomatically via Swiss intermediaries". However, the Wikipedia article on the Potsdam Declaration states that "The Declaration was never transmitted to the Japanese government through diplomatic channels." This is an obvious contradiction here; it would be great if someone could look into this and sort it out. --86.101.112.68 (talk) 17:13, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Translation

Is the lead section correct? wikt:もくさつ translates "もくさつ" (=mokusatsu) as "ignoring", not "ignore", which is "もくさつする" according to Wiktionary. This document adds "suru" too. Apokrif (talk) 17:45, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

You're reading the hiragana entry of the Wiktionary, the correct entry is here: wikt:黙殺. The word is a noun, but can also be a verb with suru. --Thibaut120094 (talk) 14:40, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

My point is: is the word - as the article currently states - a verb without "suru"? Apokrif (talk) 18:50, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

The lead statement is totally unequivocal, well-sourced, obvious, and, while giving a ref to Butow's definitive account copied by all, I've also removed the tags which are dated. Nishidani (talk) 19:27, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Dubious translation

The English translation provided for Suzuki's words does not match the Japanese text provided for Suzuki's words. The Japanese appears to cover only the middle bit, and even for that, the English translation is not ideal. Do we have full text of the Japanese statement that corresponds to the English one? Bueller 007 (talk) 01:09, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

That is fixed simply by bracketing.Nishidani (talk) 14:53, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

On 'illiteracy'

• (1) i love that your reading skills are basically zero. he says "most", you say "consensus". please do take a basic literacy class

(a) 'i' is never in the lower case, except when illiterates write.

(b) I wrote orginally ‘The consensus of modern historians is that the Allies had understood the word correctly.’ You rewrote_'this view is not universally held.' Chalmers wrote ‘most informed commentators believe’, which cannot be transformed into ‘not universally held’ (implying though almost universally held, some dissent’) the opposite of the intended meaning.

Secondly it is illiterate to assert that consensus is not the adequate term for ‘most informed commentators’. The word consensus means generally accepted opinion or decision among a group of people.

I.e. precisely what Chalmers’ words mean. ‘Most’ is a strong ‘consensus’. This is obvious and you can't see it.

• (2) dude. your English is deplorable. "advanced through the mediation the Soviet Union"????? please stop

Since you were reverting so rapidly, I missed writing 'of' ('advanced through the mediation (of) the Soviet Union), an easy correction. That slip is deplorable, if understandable in the circumstances. But what adjective would you adopt to describe your introducing the solecistic ‘intermediated’ to describe the Soviet Union acting as a mediator?

Intermediation involves the "matching" of lenders with savings to borrowers who need money by an agent or third party, such as a bank.

To mediate means to act as a 'go-between'. The force of the Latinate 'inter' is 'between' as in inter nos. So that remarkable creature, a pleonastic neologism ('to go between between'), to put it politely, is a moronically tactless screwup which, had he sighted it, James Joyce would have called sprachgefoolery

A general comment. I wrote with great specificity, citing page numbers where available. You have erased the precise page (and footnotes) I introduced to buttress my citation of these texts, leaving the reader without a clue. Despite some minor improvements, your rapid editing here has been erratic, and I suspect the only way to fix it is to go back to an earlier version, and edit it slowly, using the talk page. Nishidani (talk) 16:06, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Mokusatsu use in WW 2

While the word was or was not used or possibly misunderstood in 1945, I believe it was also used at the outset of the war in responses to a warning letter sent by Roosevelt. 47.33.164.214 (talk) 20:46, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Etymological fallacy

Since the characters for mokusatsu mean 'silent kill'

isn't this an instance of the etymological fallacy? You might as well say that the Annual Symposium on Alcohol and Health was intended to encourage drunkenness, because "symposium" is Latin for booze-up. Marnanel (talk) 15:39, 30 December 2024 (UTC)