Gyokuon-hōsō

The adults sat around their radios and cried. The children gathered outside in the dusty road and whispered their bewilderment. We were most surprised and disappointed by the fact that Emperor had spoken in a human voice. One of my friend could even imitate it cleverly. We surrounded him, a twelve-year-old in grimy shorts who spoke in the Emperor's voice, and laughed. Our laughter echoed in the summer morning stillness and disappeared into the clear, high sky. An instant later, anxiety tumbled out of the heavens and seized us impious children. We looked at one another in silence. ... How could we believe that an august presence of such awful power had become an ordinary human being on a designated summer day?

-- A Portrait of the Postwar Generation