書き言葉
Tone in Written Japanese - How to Japanese - December 2022
This is How to Japanese, a monthly newsletter with something about Japan/Japanese and a dash of いろいろ.
日本・日本語： Tone in Written Japanese
One of the paradoxes of the Japanese language is that the most formal, 固い (katai, stiff) written form of the language uses dictionary (aka “casual”) forms. Conversely, more casual written language uses です・ます (desu/masu) forms.
The latter of these statements isn’t always true. There are plenty of writers who create a casual tone with dictionary forms. However, these writers use the same techniques that です・ます writers take advantage of: Their writing borrows the affectations of the spoken language. です・ます sounds like spoken language and thus feels more casual on the page.
As an example, let’s look at some writing from 五木寛之 (Itsuki Hiroyuki).
Here’s a passage from his essay 「おでん屋とテレビ局」 (Oden Restaurants and TV Stations) in the 1968 collection 『風に吹かれて』 (Blown by the Wind). Itsuki was 36 when he wrote this:
私の同級生たちが卒業する頃に、私は学校を去った。そのため、いつまでたっても連中と一緒に学校を出たという印象が強い。 (17)
Rather than translate this, I think it makes more sense to look at what Itsuki is doing. He uses 私 (watashi) to refer to himself, includes a rather formal conjunction そのため (sono tame, for this reason/due to this), and ends sentences with dictionary forms of verbs and adjectives. His word choice, such as 去る (saru, to leave), is also appropriately 書き言葉 (kakikotoba, written language).
In contrast, here’s a passage from the forward to his 2022 book 『捨てない生きかた』 (Living Without Getting Rid of Things), which came out in January 2022 when Itsuki was 89 years old:
ぼくは、ひねくれた人間です。流行に逆らうことにひそかな生き甲斐を感じてきたようなところがあります。 (3)
Here he uses です・ます and the pronoun ぼく (boku) in hiragana. The word choices are still very literary, but it feels much more relaxed than the essays. Which I think makes sense. He’s 90 years old now, and he’s clearly taking on Kondo Marie in this new book. He probably doesn’t feel the need to write in such an authoritative, literary manner. He can speak more directly to readers.
This blog post about the difference between 敬体 (keitai, distal style) and 常体 (jōtai, direct style) highlights one of the reasons for this effect:
〈常体〉はどうしても「断定」としての要素が強くなり、読者からしてもなんとなく「強さ」を感じてしまう言い回し。「偉そう」と感じる人もいるかもしれない。
常体 has “declarative” aspects that are stronger and from a reader’s point of view feel somewhat “forceful.” Some might even take them as “pompous/self-important.”
I’ve been thinking about this phenomenon over the past year thanks in particular to two writing courses I took at IUC that had us consider the effect of Japanese writing in a way I hadn’t before. So this month, I thought it would be interesting to take a tour of some formal Japanese writing and look at what rules formal writing uses, how it’s put together, and how it creates the effect that it does.
This is the third time I’ve mentioned the Mainichi editorials (the first was in February, and the second was last month), but I do feel like they’re an incredible resource for language learners: free, timely, topical articles of around 800 characters (two manuscript pages or so) that are updated nearly every day. What’s not to love?
Politically, they seem relatively progressive as well. Earlier this month, the Mainichi published an editorial following the news of a November court decision that argued the lack of marriage options for same-sex couples in Japan is unconstitutional. You can read this Kyodo News article about the decision for more background. In the editorial, the Mainichi urges lawmakers to work more quickly to correct this problem. They’re also definitive about what rights same-sex couples have (in all but the letter of the law), using standard casual forms to make authoritative statements. Let’s take a close look at what’s going on.
Headlines do a lot of work for news articles, and the same is true here:
同性婚の法制化 実現に向けた議論加速を
They state the topic in the first chunk (“creating a legal system for same-sex marriage”) and follow it with their demand in the editorial (“speed up the debate in a realistic way”) marked with を (o). The verb of their demand is left off, but you can imagine it as してください (shite kudasai, please do) or する必要がある (suru hitsuyō ga aru, there is a need to). I can’t seem to find a useful list of all the shorthand used in headlines, but a quick look at past headlines shows that か (ka) is used to question policies and に (ni) is used to express a recommended shift toward something or mark adverbs of suggested actions, such as ～を早急に (~o sōkyū ni, move to ~ quickly). These headlines may seem dense at first until you get used to decoding them.
Moving on, the first sentence of the editorial starts with an extremely declarative sentence. You can feel the power here in the extremely basic but forceful sentence structure Xである (X de aru):
人間の尊厳に関わる重要な問題だと明確に認めた判決である。
Let’s table the discussion of だ (da) vs である for now, but I will note that this shows editorials use casual, declarative forms, and the paper chose to establish that sense of decisiveness with である.
The next point to mention is the combination of clauses. Formal written style uses different forms to join clauses than spoken Japanese:
日本では同性婚が認められておらず、同性カップルが家族になるための法制度はない。
Here, ～ていなくて (~te inakute) is instead written as ～ておらず (~te orazu). Same exact meaning, but the formal written language uses slightly different forms. MIT has a good summary of these adjustments. Other examples include dropping the て (te) on adjective forms (おいしくて —> おいしく, oishikute —> oishiku) and using verb stems instead of て forms (行って —> 行き, itte —> iki; 認めて —> 認め, mitomete —> mitome).
I’ll isolate two bits from the next sentence:
そうした現状
Here そうした (sōshita) is used in place of そういう (sōiū) for a slightly tighter option. You hear this often in news broadcasts where they often use そうした・そういった (sōitta) and other forms instead of そういう・そういう風 (sōiū fū).
The same sentence goes on to use との (to no) in place of という (to iu) to modify a noun:
憲法に違反する状態にあるとの判断を東京地裁が示した。
The との is used to modify 判断 (handan, judgment) with the short clause in front of it. Grammatically it functions identically, but it sounds much stiffer and the usage is limited to quotations and news articles. Goo has an excellent run down of the difference between という, といった (to itta), and との. In this editorial it’s paraphrasing the content of the decision the court made.
In this next clause, we see ため used as a conjunction, somewhat similar to Itsuki’s usage above:
男女の結婚を前提としているため、
This could easily be worded as から (kara, because) or ので (no de, because/so), but ため feels more appropriate in this format.
Then there’s another clause combination with a verb stem 育て (sodate, raise/bring up) instead of a て form:
ただ、男女が子を産み育て、共同生活を送るという婚姻
In this sentence we also coincidentally see how という is used differently from との; here it establishes the equals sign in an A=B structure rather than paraphrasing/quoting.
Just a quick note to point out this very editorial-sounding verb:
と結論づけた。
Then we come to this beautiful passage (beautiful for so many reasons):
人によって性的指向は多様だ。同性カップルも家族になる権利を持つのは当然である。それならば婚姻が認められるべきだ。
You have three sentences in a row in this format: AはBだ。CもDはEである。それならばFがGだ。This Chiebukuro post does a good job of explaining the respondent’s impressions of the difference between だ and である; だ is used for a definitive effect in newspaper articles and editorials, and である is used in theses and essays. In this particular passage, I think the である not only helps vary the wording, it also emphasizes the 当然 (tōzen, natural). Really great set of sentences that I think should be studied.
Note the ～となる (~to naru) in this sentence, which is more of a written expression but has essentially the same meaning as ～になる (~ni naru):
同種訴訟は各地で起こされており、今回は3件目の判決となる。
This sentence uses another very formal, written conjunction in the form ものの (mono no, but):
大阪地裁は合憲としたものの、社会状況の変化によっては将来的に違憲となる可能性に言及した。
Note also the とした (to shita) just before the conjunction, which like the となる is more suited for the written form of the language than にした (ni shita).
And finally, we have the last line, which is short and declarative, ending almost exactly how the editorial started with essentially a sentence in the form Xだ:
同性婚の法制化に向け、議論を加速すべきだ。
I hope this was a helpful look at the language and gets you thinking about tone in Japanese language. Even if you’re mostly using です・ます in emails and personal writing, just knowing what effect writing has is important as a reader. And perhaps there are elements of this style that could be adjusted for use in personal communications. Are there any lines in the sand that need to be drawn? This might be the place to look if you need something like that in your toolkit.
いろいろ
I followed up over on the blog with a few more thoughts about だけ (dake) after last month’s newsletter. Even the “only” だけ has nuances that “only” can’t capture. I suggest using “exclusively” as a test.
My manga reading obsession continues. The January issue of Cocohana is a great place to start.
Speaking of manga…
I went to see Tokumaru Shugo perform in Kyoto last weekend. He was incredible. A total musical force. If you’re looking for something new, give his albums a listen.
This new TikTok account posts videos of a Japanese student opening their bento each day. They have over 20 million views and 2.5 million likes in the first two weeks of running the account. Incredible.
Sandos? I’m a…fandos.
Thank you so much for opening these emails every month this year! I appreciate the reads and am excited to write more in 2023. Now that I have my monthly words out of the way, I’m looking forward to eating, drinking, and TVing my way through お正月. Don’t forget that a good chunk of the New Year’s programming is available on TVer.jp, which is accessible abroad with a good VPN. Hope that you find time for the things you love over the next two weeks. 良いお年を！来年もよろしくお願いします！
