Delivery of this rescript was to be one of Hirohito's last acts as the imperial Sovereign. The Supreme Commander Allied Powers and the Western world in general gave great attention to the following passage towards the end of the rescript:
Interpretation
According to the popular Western view, promoted by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, this challenged the centuries-old claim that the Japanese emperor and his predecessors were descendants of the sun goddess Amaterasu, and thus the Emperor had now publicly admitted that he was not a living god. Thus, the same day as the rescript was issued, General Douglas MacArthur announced that he was very much pleased with Hirohito's statement, which he saw as his commitment to lead his people in the democratisation of Japan. Emperor Hirohito was persistent in the idea that the emperor of Japan should be considered a descendant of the gods. In December 1945, he told his vice-grand chamberlain Michio Kinoshita: "It is permissible to say that the idea that the Japanese are descendants of the gods is a false conception; but it is absolutely impermissible to call chimerical the idea that the emperor is a descendant of the gods." Shinto officials and right wing groups throughout Japan today do not recognize the declaration as admitting that the emperor and country are not divine. Critics of the Western interpretation, including the Emperor himself, argue that the repudiation of divinity was not the point of the rescript. Since this rescript starts with a full quote from the Five Charter Oath of 1868 by the Meiji Emperor, the Emperor's true intention was that Japan had already been democratic since the Meiji Era and was not democratised by the occupiers. As was clarified at a press interview of 23 August 1977, the Emperor wanted the Japanese people not to forget pride in Japan. This interpretation is confirmed by the fact that the imperial rescript was published with a commentary by Prime MinisterKijūrō Shidehara that dwelt exclusively on the prior existence of democracy in the Meiji Era and did not make even passing reference to the emperor's "renunciation of divinity". This rescript is said to have been drafted by Reginald Horace Blyth and Harold Gould Henderson, who also contributed to the popularisation of Zen and the poetic form of haiku outside Japan.
