のだ

A subtle but important tip for written Japanese - How to Japanese - August 2023

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： のだ

I can’t stay mad at Haruki Murakami. 

After a couple months off, I picked up 遠い太鼓 (Tōi taiko, Distant Drums) again. I’ve been slowly working my way through this travel memoir over the past few years. It’s a joy to be dropped into life on the road with the Murakamis in the Greece and Italy of the 1980s. 

Not everything has aged perfectly. Murakami has a tendency to make generalizations that feel a little uncomfortable at times, but he has an amazing eye for detail and seems to actively engage with everyone he encounters while traveling. He wasn’t roughing it like the Europeans he describes traveling on a shoestring budget, but he was living simply, using the infrastructure the locals use, so the book is unique insight into what life was like for him before he became a multimillionaire, presumably, who drives a Porsche Boxster (confirmed allegedly by this website that tracks celebrity cars in Japan).

The writing is also really good, and I wanted to highlight his use of one element of Japanese: のだ (no da) in written Japanese.

I would argue that this is one of the most difficult aspects of the language to explain and to learn how to use well. It’s extremely subtle. 

Let’s take a look at one example first, then I’ll break down the dictionary definition before diving into more passages from Murakami that illustrate how students of Japanese can take advantage of のだ.

Here’s a passage from the chapter in which the Murakamis are returning from Italy to Greece. En route, he starts to notice and examine the diverse set of backpackers, leading to a few of his generalizations:

北方ヨーロッパ人—彼らは実に困難と貧困と苦行を求めて旅行をづづける。嘘じゃない。彼らは本当にそういうのを求めているのだ。まるで中世の諸国行脚みたいに。 (243)

Northern Europeans—they travel purely for the sake of hardship, destitution, and penance. This is no lie. Honestly, that’s what they’re looking for. Like pilgrims during the Middle Ages.

What’s the のだ doing there at the end of the third sentence? You could easily leave it off and end the sentence with 求めている. The basic meaning would be conveyed. Or you could add a のだ to the ends of the first or second sentences as well and the same would be true. The のだ is unrelated to the content being conveyed and instead modifies how that content is conveyed to the reader.

Here’s what the 日本国語大辞典 (Nihon kokugo daijiten) via Kotobank has to say about のだ:

(格助詞「の(一)①(ハ)」に断定の助動詞「だ」の付いたもの。活用語の連体形に付く) 話しことばでは「んだ」となることが多い。→んだ。

① 事実を確かなものと認めて提示したり、自分の主張を述べたりして、それがある事情や理由にもとづく判断であるということを示す。

② 話し手の決意を表わす。

③ (疑問詞を受けて) 意図や事実をたずねる気持を表わす。

④ 相手にある行動をするよううながす気持を表わす。

(The affirmative jodōshi だ is attached to kakujoshi の. Attaches to the rentaikei of an inflected word.) In spoken language, often becomes んだ.

1. Recognizes and presents facts as certain or makes an assertion, and demonstrates that these are judgments based on specific circumstances/reasons.

2. Expresses the speaker’s determination.

3. (Modifies an interrogative word and) questions intent or facts.

4. Urges someone to do a certain action.

(Edit: I corrected the translation of 1 above. 2025.05.20)

We are going to ignore 2, 3, and 4 here today because we’re addressing written Japanese, but んだ can serve as an emphasizer and imperative in the spoken language.

In fact, the デジタル大辞泉 (Dejitaru daijisen) via Goo combines 2 and 4 into a single definition:

１ 理由や根拠を強調した断定の意を表す。

２ 話し手の決意、または相手に対する要求・詰問の意を表す。

３ 事柄のようすやあり方を強調して説明する意を表す。

1. Expresses a declarative thought with emphasized reasoning/basis.

2. Expresses the speaker’s determination or a request/cross examination of someone.

3. Expresses an explanation with emphasis on something’s state/condition.

So looking back on the first Murakami passage. What’s he doing with this paragraph? He establishes an idea with a basic declarative sentence (Northern Europeans travel for hardship). He then follows up with a subjective judgment (what he just said isn’t a lie). He then ends by expanding on that initial declarative sentence and emphasizing it and then setting up a comparison (they seek out hardship). It makes sense, then, that we see the のだ when he expands on/emphasizes his initial idea; not only do northern Europeans endure hardship when they travel, they actively seek it out! The のだ places this emphasis. It is the italics in parenthesis above.

Here’s another example from later in the same chapter. Murakami got into the habit of locking his camera in the closet in Italy, but when he does the same back in Greece, he finds that he’s not able to unlock the lock. The key gets stuck and won’t turn. A member of hotel staff rams up against the door before realizing she’ll need more help:

「今、道具持ってくる」と彼女は言う。僕はそれを聞いてほっとする。そう、最初から道具持ってくればいいんだよ。でも彼女の持ってきた道具というのは実に石ころである。グレープフルーツくらいの大きさの石ころ。それでクローゼットの金具を叩き潰そうというのだ。とにかくものすごい音がする。僕はそれまで知らなかったけれど、石ころでクローゼットの金具を叩き潰すというのはひどくうるさい作業なのだ。 (246)

“I’ll go get a tool,” she said. I heard that and was relieved. Yeah, you should’ve brought a tool to begin with. But the tool she brought was in fact a rock. A rock about as big as a grapefruit. Then she said she was going to smash the closet hinge. It made a tremendous sound. I didn’t realize it until then, but smashing a closet hinge with a rock is incredibly noisy work.

Here we have a couple examples of のだ. In the second sentence, Murakami uses spoken Japanese with an んだ to emphasize his exasperation. Of course, she should have brought a tool. Then he creates a quoted phrase set into the pattern それでXというのだ - Then she said X. Here he’s asserting/explaining something. And in the final sentence, he’s presenting facts as certain (smashing a hinge with a rock is loud) by adding のだ after 作業. 

This last sentence is also a good example about how to create this constructions with nouns. Never add のだ straight to the noun. 作業のだ is not a possible construction. な gets added between the two: N + な + のだ.

And one final example from a fun bus ride during which all the passengers are treated to a wine tasting:

しかしこの旅行を通じてこんな美味いワインを飲んだのも初めてだったし、こんな美味いチーズを口にしたのも初めてだった。これは誇張ではない。本当に信じられないくらい美味しかったのだ。 (261)

However, over my travels this was the most delicious wine I’d drunk and the most delicious cheese I’d tasted. This isn’t an exaggeration. It was honestly unbelievably delicious.

He ends this assertion with a のだ in a structure almost identical to the first example we looked at. (This doesn’t surprise me since Greek wine is some of the best wine on the planet.)

I don’t think I’ve found a perfect example that demonstrates how this construction gets used in more formal writing. You see it a lot in writing that makes logical constructions in order to show that “something is a judgment based on set facts/reasons.” My teachers at IUC often suggested adding it to sentences at the end of a piece of writing. I don’t think you can’t create a rule as simple as “the final sentence in argumentative writing in Japanese should end with のだ,” but I think the last line in argumentative writing is often the speaker highlighting a jump in reasoning or emphasizing something that they spent the previous few sentences setting up.

What’s clear, however, is that it’s impossible to consider のだ in isolation. のだ a paragraph-level linguistic technique that requires the context of the language around it. Keep an eye out for the construction, and when you find it, soften your vision and see if you can identify what it’s doing in that context.

Speaking of keeping your eyes open for sentence structure, as a little lagniappe, I’ll introduce a really nice sentence I found. The Murakamis make a pitstop in Patras rather than trying to hoof it all the way back to Athens in one day. Here’s how Murakami describes staying in Patras:

パトラスの町に泊まりたくて泊まったわけではない。 (244)

We didn’t stay in Patras because we wanted to.

Very clean little sentence that you can easily strip down to a basic construction and re-use as necessary: 

XたくてXたわけではない。

I didn’t X because I wanted to.

行きたくて行ったわけではない。飲みたくて飲んだわけではない。戻りたくて戻ったわけではない。

The usages are endless, and as with のだ, this type of sentence is one that requires context; there’s something else, some other circumstance that you’re trying to explain, and this sentence alone won’t do it, but it serves as an excellent junction transitioning between two different ideas and making your Japanese more complex. Always be on the lookout for phrases like this that you can co-opt and make your own. Doing so requires a soft vision and a consideration of paragraph-level writing construction.

(I can’t seem to embed the podcast this month, unfortunately, so go give it a listen here.)

いろいろ

• More Murakami coming soon - watch the blog for Murakami Fest next month, during which I’ll take a close look at a few chapters from his travel memoir in Europe.

• I’ve been playing a ton of SF6 this past month. Add me if you want to fight sometime: thedanielmorales. I main Ken but have been playing with JP the last couple weeks and have had more success lol!

• I did a quick survey over on Twitter (with a pretty small sample size), but most expats seem to be showering at night. I didn’t get into this habit until moving to Japan, and even now there are times when I’ll do a quick rinse in the morning, especially in the summer, but I absolutely don’t feel right going to bed without some kind of bath now.

  

• Former JET-participant Cleo Qian just put out a book of short stories titled LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO! Give it a read.

  

• RIP Pee Wee Herman. This is one of my favorite SNL skits of all time.

• I saw 君たちはどう生きるか (The Boy and the Heron) this month. I did not think it was very good. The main problem was an issue that a lot of movies have: It was too novelistic in scope. It needed at least another two hours to really balance all the things (characters, plot points, techniques etc.) it wanted to do. The best feature-length movies are a short story in scope. And the best television shows are novelistic. This I firmly believe. I think this movie would have been much more successful as a 6-to-8 episode series, but alas. Totoro is a great example of a limited scope with story telling, and it’s essentially a short story.

• I sold a big chunk of the Murakami books I bought for my project earlier this year, and Book OFF gave me 420 yen, ha! That’s less than 50 yen per book. They must make a killing.

  

  Bon voyage…