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Hirohito said he was convinced that Japan could not continue the war. He believed the Allies would retain the kokutai. He asked everyone present to respect his decision to accept the Byrnes note, and urged the military and naval leaders to persuade their subordinates to do so. He announced his intention to broadcast personally to the Japanese people, to help them accept the shock. He instructed the government to prepare an Imperial Rescript ending the war. Most of his listeners wept. Suzuki rose, thanked the emperor and apologised for the cabinet’s failure to reach agreement, which had made imperial intervention necessary. Some post-war scholars have sought to argue that the Byrnes note enabled Japan to quit the war on contracted terms rather than by unconditional surrender, and thus that American stubbornness on the point—prompting the atomic bombs—was spurious. To dismiss this claim, it is necessary only to notice that the leaders of Japan were in no doubt that they submitted at America’s mercy and pleasure, which is why so many resisted.

That night of 14 August, junior officers from the Army Ministry, led by Maj. Kenji Hatanaka and Lt. Col. Jiro Shiizaki, staged their coup. It was a feeble adventure, which could nonetheless have had disastrous consequences. First, the two officers and their supporters rushed into Anami’s office on the war minister’s return from the imperial conference. When he said that he could not support them, adding that “those who disobey will do so over my dead body,” the conspirators burst into tears. Army chief Umezu gathered his staff around his own person, making it almost impossible for the rebels to pass orders to outlying units. His vice-chief secured the signatures of every leading military figure, including Anami, on a document committing them to accept the emperor’s sacred decision. Senior soldiers began burning documents, a process that continued apace through the weeks which followed, in all Japan’s key ministries and headquarters.

Around 4 p.m., Hatanaka and Shiizaki slipped into the compound of the Imperial Palace. They successfully convinced Col. Toyojiro Haga, commanding the 2nd Imperial Guard Regiment protecting Hirohito, that he should join their plot, on the understanding that it enjoyed the army’s support. At 11 p.m. the Imperial Rescript, signed by every member of the cabinet, was dispatched to Berne and Stockholm, for onward transmission to the four Allied governments. In his office, Hirohito read the text aloud to a phonograph. Two duplicate records were then secreted in a safe in the empress’s office, for broadcast next day. Even as the recording was being made, Hatanaka and Shiizaki drove to the headquarters of the Imperial Guard Division close to the palace, to incite its commander to join their plot. When he refused, Hatanaka drew a pistol and shot him dead. He then forged an order for all seven Imperial Guard regiments to rally to the emperor’s “protection.” This bluff was at first successful. Troops deployed to cut Hirohito’s communications with the outside world.

Hatanaka and Shiizaki themselves hastened back to the palace, and began searching for the records of the imperial broadcast. They interrogated the radio technicians and court chamberlains, but were unable to find either the disks or Marquis Kido. Had they done so, much harm might have ensued. Any delay in the imperial broadcast would have cost lives. The mutiny might have spread. Kido and the emperor himself are thought to have hidden themselves during the hours in which angry and frustrated rebels roamed the palace corridors. Around 1:30 a.m. another plotter, Anami’s brother-in-law Masashiko Takeshita, called at the war minister’s house to plead once more with him to join the coup. A farcical scene ensued. Anami invited him in and said: “I am going to commit seppuku. What do you think?” Takeshita said he had always assumed that this would be Anami’s chosen course. He certainly would not