"I speak of the old Japan, because out of the ashes of the old Japan there has risen a new Japan"
About this Quote
The “ashes” image does heavy lifting. It smuggles catastrophe into a manageable metaphor: destruction as cleansing, defeat as a kind of national reset. That’s crucial for Yoshida, the architect of postwar pragmatism. He needed a story that could justify hard choices - accepting the U.S. security umbrella, demilitarizing, prioritizing economic reconstruction - without reading as humiliation. “There has risen a new Japan” turns foreign-imposed constraints into a domestic rebirth narrative. The passive construction (“there has risen”) also sidesteps the awkward question of agency: who, exactly, is responsible for what burned, and who gets credit for what comes next?
Context matters: Yoshida governed during occupation-era and early Cold War Japan, when legitimacy had to be rebuilt quickly and carefully. This sentence offers a bridge between eras, but it’s also a warning. If the “new Japan” is an achievement born from ruin, then flirting with the “old Japan” isn’t tradition - it’s relapse.
Quote Details
| Topic | New Beginnings |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Yoshida, Shigeru. (2026, January 16). I speak of the old Japan, because out of the ashes of the old Japan there has risen a new Japan. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-speak-of-the-old-japan-because-out-of-the-ashes-102223/
Chicago Style
Yoshida, Shigeru. "I speak of the old Japan, because out of the ashes of the old Japan there has risen a new Japan." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-speak-of-the-old-japan-because-out-of-the-ashes-102223/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I speak of the old Japan, because out of the ashes of the old Japan there has risen a new Japan." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-speak-of-the-old-japan-because-out-of-the-ashes-102223/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
