Lee Masters is in Genji Misako’s debt. Nara, as Misako says, is home to priceless art treasures of all types and they are being stolen by the American-born naturalized “Jap citizen” Nathan Sharp, the youngest colonel ever in the US Air Force. Art treasures aren’t the only thing being stolen, though. Japan is also involved in developing lasers for industrial and possibly military use and plans are being leaked to “Red China.” Who’s behind it all?

As Masters and Johnny try to sort it all out, listeners get to hear one of the most tortured uses of honor and face as plot devices of all time. At the same time, though, there are myriad opportunities to read too much into the story, which is always good fun.

Lee Masters adds “as they have every right to do,” when he says that Japan might be developing lasers for military use. Was this a sly statement in support of South Africa’s then nascent nuclear program?

While making broad generalizations about “the Jap” and “the Oriental,” Masters is clearly pro-Japanese and comes off as though he were using positive stereotypes to combat negative notions. A ham-handed attempt at combatting racism? A confirmation of the inherent differences among races? Is the script in any way a product of its time and place? (The producer was an Afrikaaner.) Or was having the “American” Masters say these things a way of pointing out that white South Africans weren’t alone in painting other races with a broad brush?

“Lee Masters, Chair of Philosophy,” as Johnny jokingly calls him, leaves us with more to think about than might at first be apparent. And all this from having spent a week in Japan at the end of the Occupation back in ‘52!

The Sounds of Darkness was a Springbok Radio production, which ran on South African Broadcasting Corporation Radio from 1969 to 1974, after a brief run in the 1967-68 season. The Sounds of Darkness was the story of Lee Masters (played by veteran voice actor and radio star Tony Jay), an FBI man blinded by injury some years before, and Johnny. As Masters puts it in this episode, “Johnny does my seeing for me.”

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