H-Japan (E): Query re: Japanese emperor's "surrender speech" (4)

[Edward Fowler]

To all those who most generously responded to my query:

Thank you very much for the information on the recording/recording
process of the emperor's 8/15 speech.  I think an explanation for my
original query is in order.  Viewing a recent (1997) film, CURE, by
Kurosawa Kiyoshi, which is discussed by Aaron Gerow in a paper for
a conference here at UC Irvine, I was haunted by two images in 
particular:  a blank-faced portrait of a Meiji-period scholar of 
mesmerism who was presumably the inspiration for a young former
student of psychiatry who is able to get others to kill mindlessly
through his power of suggestion; and a recording on a vinyl cylinder,
perhaps of this same scholar, whose words are virtually indecipherable.
Aside from their denotative value in the film's diegisis, I thought
the images might also be read as metaphors for the imperial portrait 
and for the recorded broadcast, which was by all accounts difficult
to comprehend on first listening, of the emperor's speech concluding
the Pacific War in 1945.  It turns out that the match is not perfect:
the emperor's recording was on a disk, not a cylinder.  Yet I am
not yet willing to throw out the possibiltiy that Kurosawa is 
dealing with the issue of responsibility for murder on a national
level as well as a personal one in this "horror flick."  

Again, thank you for taking the time to respond.

Ted Fowler