Shin-Nippon kensetsu ni kan suru shōsho (新日本建設に関する詔書, lit. "Imperial Rescript on the Construction of a New Japan") was a 1946 Japan national radio broadcast in which Hirohito renounced his divinity and declared that Japan's sovereignty rested with the people. The edict is thus popularly known as Ningen-sengen (人間宣言), lit. "human declaration".

Delivery of this speech was to be one of Hirohito's last acts as the imperial sovereign. The speech challenged the centuries-old claim that he and those before him were descendants of the sun goddess Amaterasu, although the meaning of the exact contents — delivered in convoluted and archaic court Japanese nearly incomprehensible to the common man — have been the subject of much debate. In particular, the key phrase akitsumikami (現御神), usually glossed as "divinity" in English but literally "manifest kami", is unclear. It should, however, be noted that immediately after this repudiation of divinity, he implicitly reaffirmed it by asking the occupation authorities for permission to worship an ancestress and then worshipping the Sun Goddess; this reaffirmation would have been comprehensible to all Japanese though not necessarily by the occupation authorities.

His script was drafted by Reginald Horace Blyth, who also contributed to the popularization of Zen and Haiku outside Japan.

External links

• Full text of the rescript (http://www.chukai.ne.jp/~masago/ningen.html) (in Japanese and English)

See also

• Hirohito
• Douglas MacArthur
• World War II

ja:新日本建設に関する詔書