Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

by Rory Sutherland

In July of 1945 allied leaders meeting in Potsdam submitted a stiffly worded declaration of surrender terms and waited anxiously for the Japanese reply. The terms had included a statement to the effect that any negative answer would invite ‘prompt and utter destruction’. Truman, Churchill, Stalin, and Chiang Kai-Shek stated that they hoped that Japan would agree to surrender unconditionally and prevent devastation of the Japanese homeland and that they patiently awaited Japan’s answer. Reporters in Tokyo questioned Japanese Premier Kantaro Suzuki about his government’s reaction to the Potsdam Declaration. Since no formal decision had been reached at the time, Suzuki, falling back on the politician’s old standby answer to reporters, replied that he was withholding comment. He used the Japanese word ‘mokusatsu’, derived from the word for ‘silence’. However, the word has other meanings, quite different from that intended by Suzuki. Alas, international news agencies saw fit to tell the world that in the eyes of the Japanese government the ultimatum was ‘not worthy of comment.’ US officials, angered by the tone of Suzuki’s statement and obviously seeing it as another typical example of the fanatical Banzai and Kamikaze spirit, decided on stern measures. Within ten days the decision was made to drop the atomic bomb, the bomb was dropped, and Hiroshima was leveled. Depending on the context, mokusatsu can mean many things. It is derived from words meaning ‘silence’ and ‘death’, an...