Emperor Hirohito’s recorded 1945 broadcast announcing Japan’s surrender is known as the Gyokuon-hōsō.
The term means the “broadcast of the jeweled voice” and refers to the imperial radio address heard in Japan at noon on August 15, 1945. Hirohito read the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War, which stated that Japan had accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration.
Many listeners found the broadcast difficult to understand because of the formal Classical Japanese language and the emperor’s unfamiliar recorded voice. It was nevertheless the first time the Japanese public had heard Hirohito speak by radio. The announcement informed civilians that the war was ending but did not itself constitute the later signed legal instrument.
The Gyokuon-hōsō is therefore distinct from the Potsdam Declaration, which demanded Japan’s surrender, and from the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, which was signed aboard USS Missouri on September 2.