An Adjective by Any Other Name

Adjectives describe nouns, right? My favorite Kobun scholar, Vovin, actually calls Kobun adjectives “quality verbs.” The “quality” part points at how these gems ascribe quality in a sentence (“the stupid jellyfish), not action (”The jellyfish cooked). In “quality verb,” then, the “verb” part describes Kobun adjectives in form; unlike nouns (私) or particles (は), adjectives are dynamic and flexible in shape.

Modern Japanese adjectives aren’t all so dynamic. Na-adjectives, like しずか, come in one form that only changes in what particles it attaches to. But i-adjectives are dynamic with interior changes similar to Kobun ones.

The Two Adjective Types

Again, like Modern, there are two Kobun adjective types, which isn’t bad compared to the nine verb categories. These two types, ku- and shiku-adjectives, only really appear in three forms: Renyoukei, Shuushikei, and Rentaikei.

Ku-Adjectives (く活用形容詞)

Renyou: __く (赤く, “red”)

Shuushi: __し (赤し)

Rentai: __き (赤き)

Izen＊: __け (赤け)

Kobun: 「白き鳥の嘴(はし)と脚(あし)とあかき」(From Ise Monogatari)
Modern: 白い鳥であって、くしばしと脚とが赤い（鳥）。
English: It was a white bird with a red beak and red feet. (My translation)

＊Occasionally adjectives appear in the Izenkei as well. For more adjectival enlightenment, see Kafka-fuura’s in-depth page or this page (Japanese, but more examples), and like all Kobun elements, it can’t hurt to peek in a dictionary.

Shiku Adjectives (しく活用形容詞)

Renyou: __しく (を＊＊かしく, “strange”, “interesting”, “awesome”)

Shuushi: __し(をかし)

Rentai: __ しき(をかしき)

Izen: __ しき(をかしき)

＊＊Yes, spellings like this are abound in Kobun. There are guides, like Kafka’s page, which describe the crazy writing conventions and spelling in Kobun. Pay attention to the existence of two characters/sounds Modern lacks: ゐ (wi) and ゑ (we). If any of your teachers ever cautioned you against getting creative when scrawling “る”, now you can see why.

The “Verbal Adjectives”

Alas, Kobun is not simple. There are two other adjective types lumped into a category of Keiyou-doushi (形容動詞). Unlike ku- and shiku-adjectives, these overachievers appear in all the forms verbs can except the Meireikei (command form). I think of these as similar to Modern na-adjectives because the base part of the word doesn’t change – there’s nari and tari at the end, and those are kind of jodoushi already.

Vovin, in fact, posits the nari, tari, and occasional kari that follow the base of adjectives like 静か (shidzuka, “quiet”) are definitely just adjective + jodoushi and thus naturally end like jodoushi. The traditional dictionaries call 静けし a ku-adjective and 静かなり a nari-adjective, but 静かなり just looks like 静けし in an altered form (ka) to connect to -nari. However it helps you to look at them, here are those nari and tari endings for you:

Nari Conjugation (ナリ活用)

Mizen: __なら (静かなら, “quiet”)

Renyou: __に・なり (静かなり・に)

Shuushi: __なり (静かなり)

Rentai: __なる (静かなる)

Izen: __なれ (静かなれ)

Tari Conjugation (タリ活用)

Mizen: __たら (堂々たら, だうだうたら “austere”, “magnificent”, or “elegant”)

Renyou: __たり or と (堂々たり・と)

Shuushi: __たり (堂々たり)

Rentai: __たる (堂々たる)

Izen: __たれ (堂々たれ)

Believe it or not, it’s actually kind of hard to find examples of adjectives in text, at least flipping through the poetry of the Kokin Wakashuu. There are experts that write about this stuff, but I’m personally wondering if it might have been an aesthetic or rhetorical technique to use noun phrases and verbs more than the Keiyoushi or Keiyoudoushi above. Or perhaps it just worked better for the rhyme scheme to use “noun + の”. For example:

Kobun: Haru no yo no/ yami wa ayanashi/ ume no hana/ iro koso miene/ ka ya wa kakururu. (From Kokin Wakashuu)
English: “How foolish is the darkness on this spring night – though it conceals the plum blossoms’ charm and color it cannot hide their perfume” (Rodd & Henkenius 60).

Kakari-Musubi

1) “Cheetahs run very fast.” Good!
2) “Cheetahs runs very fast.” Not grammatical!

1 and 2 above demonstrate a language feature of English called subject-verb agreement. Classical Japanese had its own “agreement” parameters to be met, which writers were more or less second nature to Classical writers. Unfortunately, this means some unexpected sentence or clause endings. Instead of agreement being based on plurality, it was based on particles. These four make up the kakari-musubi set:

• ぞ (emphatic, anxiety)
• なむ (emphatic)
• や (doubt, question)
• か (doubt, question)

Motoori Norinaga first described this phenomenon in 1779. He was determined Japan had the best old language, that there was something divine and magical in the old words, and that only by getting away from the Chinese style of literature and all that on-yomi could Japan become stronger. If you’re thinking this sounds like the seedling of the empire-building nationalism of the late 1800’s, you’d be right. It happened around the world, actually.

Norinaga called the Kobun particle-verb agreement 係り結び – kakari-musubi, using the characters for “connect” and “tie/bind”.

There is one other type of musubi, but I’ll get to that after illuminating the kakari-musubi.

The Rentai-Bully Particles

Look here, sentence. We’re ending on an attributive note, today, and there’s nothing you can do to change that

Musubi would be like ball lightning if the phenomena was more common. That is, musubi have scientifically observable patterns, but they still skew our view of the sentence. Musubi are also like bullies. We’ve actually seen them before; I included this example in Kobun Part 3:

Kobun: 「雪降れば木毎（ごと）に花ぞ咲きにけるいづれを梅と分きて折らまし」
English: “After the snowfall, flowers have burst into bloom on every tree. How am I to find the plum and break off a laden bough?” (Kokin Wakashu 81).

The presence of the particle ぞ forces ける into the Rentai (attributive) form. Since I personally wouldn’t question the attributive being in that spot in the sentence (though the Renyoukei might make more sense), I’ll explain through a clearer example:

何事をかは中納言にはつたへならはすべき
“[W]hat thing should [we] entrust to the Chunagon?” (Vovin 209)

Normally, sentences end with the Shuushikei, right? But the Shuushikei of that final jodoushi is actually べし, while what we see above is べき, the Rentaikei (attributive). This is a case where the sentence ends in the rentaikei because of the presence of a musubi. So when you’re checking charts to see if the ending verb or jodoushi is what you think it is, take this into account.

That said, there are some non-musubi occasions for the sentence to end in the rentaikei, which I’ve cautioned about in the past Kobun articles. According to Vovin, this trend was, at first, only in 11th century recorded dialogue; the narratives of Kobun texts avoided Rentaikei-ended sentences. Over time, however, the trend was adopted into narratives, as well.

Pay attention to what you’re reading. If you’re reading something on the earlier scale of Classical texts, you’ll be okay just keeping an eye out for musubi. If you’re reading, say, the lyrics to a folk song from the Edo period or maybe even the Tsuresuregusa (14th century), there might not be a musubi around when a sentence ends in the rentaikei.

The Koso Musubi

First of all, you’re doing zazen meditation wrong. Second of all, I said Izen, not zazen, which you would know if you’d open up your ears for once

One other musubi should be noted, and it forces the Izenkei. If you don’t remember, the Izenkei indicates started or even completed actions (not “past tense” or “end of sentence”) and usually pairs up with ～ば for “since” or “when”.

When こそ is used, the Izenkei form seems out of place in the middle of the sentence with no ～ば. In this example of the koso-musubi, what Shirane calls a “concessive” (49) is what the rest of us would translate as “though” or “but”. For example:

Kobun: こまかにこそあらねどときどきものいひをこせけり (From Ise Monogatari)
English: “[he] sometimes sent [her] messages, although [they] were not cordial” (Vovin 214)

The あらね is 有り (to be) + ず (neg.) in the Izenkei. After that, the ど you see is a particle of contradiction (“although” or “despite…”).

In other instances, こそ will force the last verb or jodoushi into the Izenkei as a word of emphasis.

Kobun: 折節（を理節）の移（うつ）りかはるこそ、ものごとに哀（あはれ）なれ.(From Tsurezuregusa)
English: “It is precisely the changing of the seasons that makes everything so moving” (Shirane 49, italics his).

You should know koso from the modern, but if you need a refresher, Vovin remarks that, “koso seems to place especially strong emphasis on a preceding word or phrase, much stronger than the [Kobun] particles zo and namu” (430).

If you’re wondering, “What on earth do I do if I see koso and zo, etc. in the same sentence?”, then Vovin’s got you fixed there, too, for almost every instance: “the form of the final predicate is defined by the particle that comes closest to the final predicate” (214).

The End of the Road?

That might not have been quite as easy breezy as jodoushi were, but then, I just taught you how to disarm Kobun bombs that would otherwise destroy your attempts at translation. Plus, Classical Japanese adjectives look so similar to modern ones, don’t they? You’ll probably understand them as you see them in texts without needing to look them up. Plus, when you think about the “core” meanings in the musubi gang, the only new particles are namu and ya.

So yes, that’s it: four adjective types, which mostly overlap in the ending sounds, and five agressive particles. If you’ve got questions, the comments section has an empty text box with your name on it. Ask away! Otherwise, get ready for the next and probably last Kobun post: Classical Japanese Honorifics.

Bonus Wallpapers

[1280x800] ∙ [2560x1600]

Sources

• Kokin Wakashu: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry : with Tosa Nikki and Shinsen Waka. Trans. Helen Craig McCullough. Stanford Univ. Press, 1985. p. 81.
• Rodd, Laura Rasplica, and Mary Cathy Henkenius. Kokinshu: A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern. Princeton University Press, 1984. p. 60.
• Shirane, Haruo. Classical Japanese: A Grammar. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. p. 49.
• Vovin, Alexander. A Reference Grammar of Classical Japanese Prose. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. p. 187-188, 208-209, 214, 430.

Kobun jodoushi are pretty old (we are talking about classical Japanese, after all!), but they do still show up in modern Japanese from time to time. We’ll see them fixed with verbs, in set phrases, or even adverbs. Some exist as useable grammar points. Most, however, appear in much the way that everything else in Kobun does: in the monogatari’s and nikki’s and other classical Japanese texts. That is, after all, why we’re learning so much about Kobun!

Timeless Jodoushi

Somehow, these dinosaurs made it into Modern Japanese, but they often sound formal or eloquent. Like, “Asteroid scientist, I am Danneth of Sharpteeth Abbey. You know the whereabouts of the asteroid which vanquished my ancestors. Kindly take me to it, or kindly prepare yourself for death”, kind of eloquent. Not so old-timey sounding, but definitely eloquent.

For each jodoushi below, I’ve provided a Kobun sentence taken from my favorite online Kogo-jiten where that jodoushi makes an appearance.

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べし

べし was the base form of a jodoushi that has survived through two evolutionary tracks to the Modern: べき (the old Rentaikei) and べく (the old Mizenkei and Renyoukei). べき is used these days to talk about the way things ought to be done, like English “should”, and doesn’t sound particularly high-brow or anything like the rest of these. べく is less common, and is a conjunction that indicates a direct cause or prerequisite. But in Kobun, べし could also mean that someone is assuming or framing a situation a certain way.

Kobun:「人は、形・有り様のすぐれたらんこそ、あらまほしかるべけれ」(From Tsurezuregusa)

Modern: 人間は容貌（ようぼう）や風采（ふうさい）がすぐれていることこそ、望ましいだろう。

English: “It is desirable that a man’s face and figure be of excelling beauty” (Keene 3-4).

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ず

In both Modern Japanese and in Kobun, ず is a negative, like “not”. In Modern, ず can sound pretty formal. The ず jodoushi is ぬ in the Rentaikei (see part 2 of this series, scroll down to step 2), and that form appears in Modern as well, though less frequently. There’s important nuance to the ぬ breed of negation, so ask around before using it or you might sound like a better-than-thou snob (or, in Mami’s words, “a bossy Shogun”). In Kobun, however, ず/ぬ is a frequent (non-snobbish) -ない kind of negation.

Kobun:「京には見えぬ鳥なれば、みな人見知らず」(From Ise Monogatari)

Modern: 都では見かけない鳥であるので、そこにいる人は皆、よく知らない。

English: “Since it was of a [bird] species unknown in the capital, none of them could identify it” (Tales of Ise 76).

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ごとし

I’ve only run into ごとし once in Contemporary Japanese literature　（as ごとく), if that tells you anything about its frequency. ごとく is a sophisticated-sounding ～のようだ, in Modern Japanese. The Kobun ごとし, however, could mean a variety of things. Like the modern version, it could be used for comparison, but also for equivalence or as an example-provision:

Kobun:「世の中にある人とすみかと、またかくのごとし」(From Houjouki)

Modern: 世の中にいる人間と住居と（が無常なこと）は、また、これと似ている。

English: “In this world, people and their dwelling places are like that, always changing” (from here).

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る、 さす、and す

Yeah, I know, there’s -る in almost every verb garden out there. This one is pretending to be a Kobun weed when really it’s the base form of almost the same passive or potential you’d recognize today. The others – さす、しむ、 and す – are causative, which also kind of overlap with modern. Go here for a more detailed breakdown of them.

Kobun:「涙のこぼるるに、目も見えず、物も言はれず」(From Ise Monogatari)

Modern: 涙があふれ出て、目も見えず、物も言うこともできない。

English: ”I am blind and speechless with tears” (Tales of Ise 110).

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Debbie Downer Jodoushi

These Jodoushi are negatives. When Classical writers saw an affirmative verb’s bridge of dreams and wanted to crush it, they used one of these bad boys. What’s that, Taketori Monogatari? Bamboo cutter “有りけり”? NOPE. Author guy’s Pokémon Pen slams the sentence with “有らぬ” and there wasn’t an old bamboo cutter.

——

まじ

Do you remember this advertisement from　the very first part of the Kobun series?

Written there you can see maji、which negates “forgive” and generally seasons the sentence with some negative feelings:

Kobun-ized ad: 許すまじ！

Modern: 許すな! or 許さないぞ!

English: Don’t yield (to pollen)!

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じ

This is pretty equivalent to the modern 「まい」. It’s a negative + “probably” or negative + intention. See here:

Kobun:「京にはあらじ、あづまの方に住むべき国求めにとて行きけり」 (From Ise Monogatari)

Modern: 京には住むつもりはない、東国の方に住むのにふさわしい国を探し求めるためにと思って。

English: “Perhaps because he found it awkward to stay in the capital”… “[He] journeyed toward the east in search of a place to live” (Tales of Ise 74).

——

Yesterday’s News

“That outfit is so past tense.”

The following jodoushi relate to time. Most of them are for the past, but not all.

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けり、き、and けむ

We encountered けり in the Kobun verbs article – it’s a past tense thing. き is the same, but it has a crazy line of conjugation, so be sure to check out the chart I include at the end of this article. けむ、meanwhile, talks about something that has happened and is part conjecture (see the -ただろう in the sentence translation).

Kobun:「昔、こはたと言ひけむが孫といふ」(From Sarashina Nikki)

Modern: 昔、こはたと言ったとかいう（人）の孫という。

English: “They said that they were the descendants of a [once-]famous singer called Kobata” (Doi and Omori 11).

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らむ

Like in Disney’s Mulan, when Mushu says, “Dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow….” This jodoushi casts “Deshou” on the situation, “deshou” on a reason for the situation, and general vagueness all around, in my opinion, since らむ can also equate to euphemism or simile.

Kobun:「などや苦しき目を見るらむ」(From Sarashina Nikki)

Modern: どうしてつらい目に遭うのだろうか。

English: How did it come to such a rough time as this? (my translation)

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む/むず

This jodoushi can be the volitional (modern ～しよう！） or a “deshou”. As in modern, a “deshou” or volitional can go a long way towards soft suggestions for the way things ought to be. Likewise, む/むず in Konbun could represent a suggestion and even, as with らむ, simile.

Kobun:「かのもとの国より、迎へに人々まうで来（こ）むず」(From Taketori Monogatari)

Modern: あのもとの国 から、迎えに人々がやってまいるだろう。

English: “People are going to come from my original land for me” (Behr 128).

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Completion

These jodoushi are flip-a-table, pull-the-plug, 800% done. Or, the verb they attach to sounds like a completed action, at least.

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つ

The Renyoukei (see part 1 of this series and scroll to “step 2”) for つ is て. Classical Japanese had a few other sentence parts (like particles) with ‘て’ at the border between words, so you’ll want to list out some guesses when translating. In addition to completion, つ was written for lists (like “…たり…たり、…” in modern) or a “deshou”-tinted “certainly” or “without mistake” (“たしかに…だろう”).

Kobun:「蠅（はへ）こそ、憎きもののうちに入れつべく」(From Makura no Soushi)

Modern: はえ（という虫）こそ、憎らしいものの中に確かに入れてしまいたいもので

English: “The fly should have been included in my list of hateful things . . .” (Morris 70).

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ぬ

This is a different ぬ than the negative ず/ぬ. This ぬ is completion. How do you know which ぬ is being used in the sentence? You’ll have to look at charts and forms. Remember that the Mizenkei usually precedes negatives, while the Renyoukei is usually used as a connective form. So verb in Mizenkei + ぬ　= negative action, while Renyoukei + ぬ = completed action (probably). There’s more to it than that, but here’s an example sentence to get you started – it’s a beautiful poem from the Kokin Wakashuu, as translated by Kuma Papa-san).

Kobun: 「散りぬとも香をだに残せ梅の花」

Modern: 散ってしまっても香りだけは残していってくれ、梅の花よ

English: “If these plum blossoms must wither/scatter, at the very least leave your fragrance. . ..” (Kafka-Fuura).

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り

This jodoushi can signify either completion or an on-going action – use your best judgement when translating.

Kobun:「くらもちの皇子（みこ）は優曇華（うどんげ）の花持ちて上り給（たま）へり」 (From Taketori Monogatari)

Modern: くらもちの皇子は優曇華の花を持って都へお上りになった。

English: “Prince Kuramochi has returned with the Udonge flower!” (Behr 108-109).

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The Wishlist

Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary, defines hope as “Desire and expectation rolled into one”, which is exactly what 希望（kibou) sounds like. Guess what these jodoushi express? Hopes, wishes, and dreams, like the modern -たい form.

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たし and まほし

These are both like the modern -たい or （て）ほしい, depending on the subjects and objects in the sentence.

Kobun:「帰りたければ、ひとりつい立ちて行きけり」(From Tsurezuregusa)

Modern: 帰りたいときはいつでも、（自分）一人ふいと立って行ってしまった。

English: “When he was ready to go home, he at once got up and went off all alone” (Porter 53-54).

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The Circus Group

The final group of jodoushi are a hodgepodge mix. Some resemble verbs, while some simply have unique meaning or classification.

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なり

This jodoushi only sounds like the regular verb “なり” by coincidence. なり tags onto a verb to convey an assumption of some sort, hearsay, or to point out that something has been physically heard, as in:

Kobun:「音羽山（おとはやま）今朝（けさ）越えくればほととぎす梢（こずゑ）はるかに今ぞ鳴くなる」(From Kokin Wakashuu)

Modern: 音羽山を今朝越えて来ると、ほととぎすが梢はるかに今鳴いているのが聞こえるよ。

English: “Journeying onward over Otowa Mountain while the day is young, I hear a cuckoo singing high in the distant treetops” (Kokin Wakashu 41).

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まし

まし is what’s called a “counter-factual supposition”. It’s inherently hypothetical – sometimes just an observation, but sometimes conveying wistfulness. It often connects to the conditional ～ば, but it doesn’t have to. “Would that I had eaten ice cream one last time before the zombie apocalypse began!” is an example in English.

Kobun: 「雪降れば木毎（ごと）に花ぞ咲きにけるいづれを梅と分きて折らまし」(From Kokin Wakashuu; more breakdown here)

Modern: 雪が降って、木に白い花が咲いたように見える。どの木を本当の梅の木と区別して折ったらよいだろうか。

English: “After the snowfall, flowers have burst into bloom on every tree. How am I to find the plum and break off a laden bough?” (Kokin Wakashu 81).

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めり

Like a lot of things on this list, めり indicates a projection of circumstances, but, unlike most of the others, has a strong tinge of uncertainty or neutrality. In English, this would be the difference between “Someone forgot their bag” and “It looks as if someone forgot their bag”.

Kobun: 「簾（すだれ）少し上げて、花奉るめり」(From Genji Monogatari)

Modern:（尼君は）すだれを少し上げて、（仏に）花をお供えしているように見える。

English: “A nun, raising a curtain before Buddha, offered a garland of flowers on the alter” (Suematsu 92).

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らし

The Kobun らし acts exactly like the Modern らしい, but I don’t know that they are actually related (changing from a jodoushi to an adjective?). But like so many others on this list, らし is conjecture, a statement about the appearances of a situation or thing, including the reason something came to be.

Kobun:「ぬき乱る人こそあるらし」(From Kokin Wakashuu)

Modern: 糸を抜いて玉を乱れ散らす人がいるらしい。

English: “There must be a man unstringing them at the top” (McCullough 482).

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らる

らる is classified on charts and in Kobun discourse as 自発. Spontaneous? As in “Spontaneous Combustion Man”? Yeah, I didn’t get it either, at first. But if you reframe it as an expression of naturally occuring or unplanned actions and circumstances, then it makes more sense.

Kobun:「なほ梅の匂（にほ）ひにぞ、いにしへの事も立ちかへり恋しう思ひ出（い）でらるる」(From Tsurezuregusa)

Modern: やはり梅の香りによって、以前のことも（当時に）さかのぼって、自然となつかしく思い出される。

English: “It is the perfume of the plum which sends our thoughts lovingly back to the days of old” (Porter 21).

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Wrap-up: A Kobun Jodoshi Chart

As promised, here is a jodoushi chart, made by the education site “Wiquitous”. The top row is the verb form (Renyoukei, etc.) that the jodoushi tags onto, while the right side scales down the forms the jodoushi conjugate through. Empty circles mean that the jodoushi doesn’t appear in that form. Meireikei (command form), for example, doesn’t go hand-in-hand with many helper verbs, and that makes sense when you think about it.

Jodoushi were way easier than verbs, right? The verb patterns I talked about before permeate everything, so knowing the forms is truly essential. Hopefully, learning about helper verbs just made the previous lesson snap into focus. We’re not completely done looking at conjugations, though, because adjectives are still to come.

Sources:

• Behr, Maiko R.. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter: A Study in Contextualization. Diss. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1998.
• Bierce, Ambrose. The Devil’s Dictionary.
• Doi, Kōchi and Annie S. Omori. Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan. Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1920.
• Kafka-Fuura’s Classical Japanese Blog
• Keene, Donald, trans., and Kenkō Yoshida. Essays in Idleness; the Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
• Kokin Wakashu: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry : with Tosa Nikki and Shinsen Waka. Trans. Helen Craig McCullough. Stanford Univ. Press, 1985.
• Kuman Papa-san. (“散りぬとも香をだに残せ梅の花恋しきときの思ひ出にせむ”.](http://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/meganebiz/diary/201303190006/)
• McCullough, Helen Craig. Brocade by Night: “Kokin Wakashu” and the Court Style in Japanese Classical Poetry. Stanford University Press, 1985.
• Morris, Ivan, trans. The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
• Porter, William, trans., and Kenkō Yoshida. The Miscellany of a Japanese Priest, Being a Translation of Tsure-zure Gusa. London: Humphrey Milford, 1914.
• Suematsu, Kencho. Genji Monogatari by Lady Murasaki Shikibu. 1982. Reprint. New York: Colonial Press, 1900.
• Tales of Ise: Lyrical Episodes from Tenth-Century Japan. Trans. Helen Craig McCullough. Stanford University Press, 1968.

Brave Kobun pupils! I’m going to take you further into the woods of Classical Japanese with verbs. Remember, Kobun is very different from Modern Japanese, and, as such, you’ll see new and unfamiliar features. In starting with verbs, I’m being biased and deliberate. It’s my opinion that verbs are top priority in a Kobun education because:

• Classical Japanese, like Modern, can omit the subject.
• Again like Modern, adjectives work like light verbs.
• Verbs take longer to look up and identify accurately than nouns, particles, etc.

Seriously – it’s a long process to decode verbs. I’ll describe an approach each for the short-term and long-term Kobun students. Both approaches involve puzzling a verb’s meaning by 1) establishing what kind of verb you’re dealing with and 2) looking at what shape it’s in.

The Short-term Approach

Photo by Anu & Anant

If you’ve never used Rikaichan, check it out. Rikaichan is an app that doles out meaning and readings for unfamiliar Japanese words and kanji if you hover your mouse over in-browser text. The short-term approach to Kobun verbs is equivalent to using Rikaichan on a news article: unless you’re really pro at Japanese, you won’t mentally store all the new words and characters Rikaichan breaks down for you, but you can read and comprehend the news article. This kind of approach is about understanding a text you have time to sit with but don’t expect to quote or write commentary about.

Let’s start with this line, the first in Taketori Monogatari:

いまは昔、竹取の翁といふもの有りけり。

Here’s the non-verb stuff in the sentence :

• いまは昔 (mukashi): now (subject) an ancient time
• 竹取 (take-tori): bamboo-lumberjack (AKA “bamboo wood-cutter”)
• の翁 (ou)といふもの: an old person/man.

といふもの is technically a verb phrase. I’m ignoring it because it has carried on into modern Japanese as というもの. That leaves just one verb phrase to decypher: 有りけり(arikeri).

Given this information, I want you to spend a moment searching around in a kogo-jiten for what you think 有りけり means. Don’t look up translations. Honestly look to see if you can analyze 有りけり the way you could “食べました”, which is [“eat” + past + polite + affirmative + end of a sentence]. Did you give it your best shot? I hope so. Here’s what I do:

Step 1: ID the Verb

First, we’ll need to figure out what kind of verb we’re looking at. Find the verb in a kogo-jiten. 「有りけり」 as a whole doesn’t get results. However, breaking it up into「有り」and 「けり」gives us results. Here’s 有り.

The top orange box outlines the verb type: 有り is a ra-gyou henkaku (“ra-sound irregular”) verb. The second box encapsulates the most common meaning: “to exist”, “to be”, etc. But wait — do you see the sample usage they provide? I’ve underlined it: it’s the sentence we’re trying to translate! We’ve definitely ID’d the right 有り. As for けり…

In the previous search, we could tell that what we’d found was a verb because 自動詞 (jidoushi; “transitive verb”) was written before ラ行変格 (the verb type). But here the Kogo-jiten entry lists けり as 「助動詞 (jodoushi)」, which means “helper verb”. Jodoushi won’t appear on their own but, instead, always connect to something else.

The orange box in the screencap outlines that this 助動詞 is used to create a past tense verb. So, this けり is like the “-ed” in English “highlighted” and the “た” in Modern Japanese “食べた”. Again, underlined in orange, the example provided is the very sentence we’re translating! For other verbs, though, you won’t be as lucky.

Pretend the sentence they provided wasn’t the exact one we’re looking at now. Two other search results appeared for “けり”: one is a verb (not a helper verb) that means “to come along” and the other is a verb for “to be wearing”. How do you know which is the right one? Mostly from meaning and context. While it’s definitely possible to see verbs chained together, “live” (verb) + “past tense” (helper verb) makes more sense here than “live” + “came along/comes along”or “live” + is “wearing”, especially after looking at the next step.

Step 2: Listen to the Verb

The next step: identify what form, or 形 (~kei) the verb is in. I’ve translated another part of the entry for けり in that screencap: “Attaches to an inflecting word in the Renyoukei”. If this けり attaches to a Renyoukei verb, we need to check if 有り is in the Renyoukei or not. Then we’ll know for sure which of the three けり’s is in this sentence. Ugh, homophones.

To check which “form” the verb is in (Renyoukei, etc.), think about the last sound in 「有り」 and check this chart:

This chart was made by Anthony Stewart. The original chart has more cool things and is available here.

Using the charts is like playing Battleship. The verb types are the x-axis points which intersect with sound-based forms on the y-axis. As the chart lists, 有り, a ラ行変格 verb, could appear as -あら, -あり, -ある, or -あれ. The form in our sentence ends in -り, which means we either have the Renyoukei or the Shuushikei.

Renyoukei is a connective form, like the Modern Japanese pre-masu stem. Shuushikei is a form that marks the end of a sentence, like how “-ました” in modern Japanese always comes at the end of a sentence and never in the middle. 有り doesn’t end the sentence, so it’s not in the Shuushikei. Plus, 有り is connected to something, which means it’s the Renyoukei 「あり」. We were right with our context judgement: the right けり is the past tense helper verb. けり also happens to be in the Shuushikei, the sentence-ending form, so all the pieces line up.

It’s helpful to know what all of those y-axis forms mean. But an in-depth knowledge of those verb forms isn’t necessary in the short-term approach since you can just look them up.

If you put the pieces together [“live” or “exist” + past tense + end of sentence], it becomes clear what 有りけり as a whole means. Kafka-fuura skillfully translates this sentence as: “In a time now long past, there was an old man who was a bamboo cutter.”

You might be getting curious about some patterns. Could 有り sit on its own in the Renyoukei? While using the short-term approach, don’t fill your head with such stuff. Just look things up until they make sense. Eventually, some patterns will settle in your memory, and that’s great, but memorizing patterns isn’t the aim. The aim is to give you a process for sporadic Kobun dealings. That said, the short-term approach only works if you have time to sit with a Classical sentence and some dictionaries and charts.

The Long-term Approach

The short term method will hold back folks who really want to learn the lingo of the ancients. So, I’ve made the above flow chart for your referencing pleasure. Short-term and long-term students can benefit from the chart, but long-term learners should know it thoroughly.

To read more than the first couple pages of one Classical Japanese text, it’s more efficient to have verb types steadily memorized on the front end of your learning journey.

Actually, that’s how my Latin education was; we learned verb conjugations and noun declensions while reading increasingly difficult sentences at a slow pace. At first I was reading “In the picture is a Roman girl named Flavia”, but by the end of the year, I could eek out a paragraph from the eloquent Cicero. If I had had a prior knowledge of Italian, my reading comprehension probably wouldn’t have taken me a year, though, because of common vocabulary and roots. So if you have a functional grasp of modern Japanese (and motivation!), it won’t take you a year to teach yourself what’s necessary to read Kobun.

Step 1: Know Thine Verb Types

As I briefly pointed out earlier, Kobun verbs come in different types. Think of them as flavors. Things that are watermelon flavored just get called some variety of “watermelon-flavored”, right? Verb type names aren’t misleading. For example, 四段 (yo-dan) verbs are called “quadrigrade” because they conjugate into four different vowel endings. 知る is a 四段 verb, and conjugates as outlined in orange:

The vowels あ、い、う、and え added together make four grades of sound, see? Hence 四 (“four”) 段 (“grades” or “steps”).

The other eight verb types are: 上一段 (kami-ichi), 上二段 (kami-ni), 下一段 (shimo-ichi), 下二段 (shimo-ni), and the irregular ナ行変格 (na) , ラ行変格 (ra), カ行変格 (ka), and サ行変格 (sa-gyou henkaku) verbs. For the first four, see the next image. The last four conjugate mostly as 四段 verbs, but with irregularities you can reference in a traditional chart.

Ichi-dan = one vowel in the Katsuyou. Kami = ‘upper’ vowel (almost always い). Shimo = ‘lower’ vowel (え). Ni-dan = either upper or lower vowel plus the median う.

My favorite author on Classical Japanese, Vovin, actually boils those verb categories down to just three: verbs with a vowel stuck at the end of the root (like mi-, “see”), verbs stuck with a consonant at the end (shin-, “die), and irregular verbs.

Step 2: Know Thy Charts

Photo by Linus Bohman

There are a variety of charts out there, but they’re all basically the same x/y-axis combo between verb types and forms. Hard-core classicists probably have, either intentionally or over time, memorized which sounds correspond to which verb forms.

Personally, I don’t think you need to have the sounds memorized. It would suffice to just be really familiar with the form boxes and what they represent:

• 未然形　Mizenkei: Imperfective, but not really, since it usually tags an action that has not yet begun. Connects often to form the negative.
• 連用形　Renyoukei: Stem form, like pre-ます.
• 終止形　Shuushikei: Sentence ender.
• 連体形　Rentaikei: Attributive. Modifies other parts of sentence, like 「かかる人…」, “such a person…”. Can also make gerunds and participials. Sometimes, this ends a sentence.
• 已然形　Izenkei: Perfective. Action started or completed.
• 命令形　Meireikei: Command form. Usually on its own and at the end of a sentence.

These forms are what I’m personally trying to memorize and understand, especially since I am now noticing Kobun forms in Japanese media a lot more. It’s easy for me to notice and remember things like “けり”, but not as easy to translate, say, a folk song as I hear it.

All Roads Lead to Rome

No matter which interest group you fall in for Classical Japanese, both translation approaches I’ve described emphasize looking at these four parts of verbs:

If you wish I’d provided more examples, check out the cool stuff below — especially the source with quizzes. Deciphering Kobun is a strategic process that takes practice (and time) to get right. If you have any questions, please say something in the comments section. The sources I’ve been using are have more fun tidbits than I have space in this article to fully explore (after all, they are books on the subject). Ditto for comments or criticisms: I want to hear your take on Kobun verbs, especially if you are learning it in class or on your own!

Cool Stuff

• Classical readings with multiple-choice quizzes (Japanese)
• Anthony Bryant’s page for verbs (English)
• Various Kobun readings (Japanese)
• Fill-in-yourself practice conjugation charts (Japanese)
• Wikimedia book for Kobun verbs, oriented with verb type on the y-axis (Japanese)

Sources

• Barczikay, Zoltan. “Classical Japanese Grammar: Japanese verbs”.
• Stewart, Anthony. “Bungo Nyuumon”, Paradigm Chart & Verbs.
• Kafka-Fuura. “竹取物語ー「かぐや姫の生い立ち」”Taketori Monogatari” – The Birth of The Shining Princess”
• Shirane, Haruo. Classical Japanese: A Grammar. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. p. 24, 44.
• Vovin, Alexander. A Reference Grammar of Classical Japanese Prose. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. p. 163- 172, 213.

Obviously, if you’re already familiar with interpreting Kobun / Bungo, you may not find this very useful. However, if you’re a reader who doesn’t know what a 上二段 verb in the 終止形 is, this article is for you.

What is Kobun?

There might be some konbu in there… oh, kobun?

I said earlier that Kobun was a “literary language.” This means that while it was modeled on a spoken language (Classical Japanese), the literary form was used long after the spoken form had drastically changed. So basically, people were were writing the way that people spoke long ago, even though they don’t speak that way anymore, all the way up until 1900 (though it was still used frequently from the turn of the 20th century to WWII, and then occasionally afterwards).

English-speaking scholars mostly call this Japanese prose language “Bungo”. Among Japanese-speakers, however, “Kobun” or even “Koten” (though “Koten” can just refer to “the classics”) is used unless one is trying to specifically contrast the spoken with the written language of the time. In Japanese primary education, the textbooks usually say “Koten” or “Kobun”, so we’ll go with that.

Five Reasons Why It’s Worth Studying

「花粉！鼻炎！許すまじ！！」

Reason #1: Japanese students learn it sometimes as early as middle school, with usually a few lessons on the topic per week until high school graduation. You can check out a Youtube channel for students here or search “古文” at this Japanese educators’ site. I don’t know about you, but I want to be smarter than 6th grader.

Reason #2: It could be on the N1 of the JLPT. A friend of mine who passed the 2013 N1 said he didn’t run across any Kobun, or that maybe it was there but he just didn’t recognize it. Though, some people say that it shows up because of idioms, which often have archaic elements thrown in.

Reason #3: Talking points. Like a knowledge of pop culture, Kobun knowledge will give you things to talk about. You don’t need to have Taketori Monogatari memorized, but having experience reading some of the classics would help you relate to peers. Kobun appears in: modern and older songs (here’s one and another), Noh and Kabuki, anime, and generally when people try to sound serious (or when they’re being sarcastic about being serious).

Reason #4: Most Japanese college entrance exams include Kobun as testable material. So, if you’re trying to test into a Japanese school as a regular student, a dash of Kobun can go a long way.

Reason #5: Nationalism. In case you’re not familiar with the political climate right now, here’s how one of my Japanese friends put it:

“Right now, nationalism is on the rise, thanks to the Abe administration, and so there’s this trend of stressing the importance of tradition and history, etc. And so, even with Kobun, with things like Polite and Humble language, they’re part of Japan’s unique culture and as such ‘must be treasured’, a lot of people say.” —K.S.

Keigo aside, other traditional things in Japan, such as Ikebana, tend to have jargon heavy on the archaic language. With such a long history, you can imagine the list of other hobbies and areas of study in which you would spot a wild Kobun sentence.

Exhibit A

No wonder the author is anonymous. Their handwriting is terrible.

Here’s an example to demonstrate just how different Kobun can be when compared to modern Japanese. An example from the Hamamatsu Chuunagon Monogatari, 11th Century AD:

よしのの山となにながれたるよりもなをおくなるみよしのといふところ。

Part of the difficulty there is the plethora of kana that could be written in kanji but clearly weren’t. For example, that “いふ” is actually “言ふ”. I’m not an expert on how, but there definitely were aesthetic preferences to blame for this strange balance of kanji to kana in written Japanese. This is difficulty number one.

“Mountain” is the only meaning we can get without looking a lot of the other things up in a Kojiten (Classical dictionary). Sure, you might see “ながれた” and “より” and “ところ”, but there’s a probability that those things don’t mean in that sentence what they would mean in a modern sentence. Then, even after you discern their meaning, you still have to analyze all the other kana.

In case you’re curious, here’s one translation of that sentence: “A place called Miyoshino, more distant than those which are known under the name of the Yoshino mountains” (Vovin 74).

The “ながれた” there combines with “る” and “より” to mean “than those which are known”. Many Kobun particles and words exist in Modern Japanese, with sometimes the same and sometimes different meanings. Many died out. My tip: if you hear ‘namu’ or ‘keri’, you are 99% likely to be dealing with Kobun, since those don’t exist in modern and don’t sound like many common modern words (or parts of modern words).

One Approach

The way you know this isn’t Kobun is because of all the helpful Kanji.

What to do when you do see Kobun? Here’s my approach for translating Kobun text.

(Some things, like “conclusive form” and “Musubi”, below may not make sense now, but I’ll elaborate in future articles – this is just the process, and there are resources at the bottom to get you started if you’re that curious now)

1. Read the sentence through once. Get an impression.
2. Look up kanji you dont know.
3. What do you think are nouns? What about subject/topic markers? (They were often dropped in Kobun writings). Look them up in a Classical dictionary.
4. Go to the end of the sentence. What does that look like? Is the verb in the conclusive form? Attributive? Something strange? If it’s strange, look for a Musubi.
5. Slide back and forth in the sentence, listing out on a sheet of paper what each kana could mean. You’ll ask yourself a lot, “Is that a particle or a verb written in kana there?” This is a trial and error process-of-elimination sort of approach. Obviously, you can look up existing translations, but that should be a final resort since it won’t always pan out or benefit you.
6. Look at the previous sentence. Look at the current sentence. Contemplate. Then move on to the next. The people composing these texts were trying to write beautifully, so some sentences will be mysterious hook lines for the next bit of content. And like in Modern Japanese, the authors will also carry established subjects across sentences and will probably only tell you what each sentence’s subject is if it changes. So you have to keep looking back and forth: within the clause, throughout the sentence, and across the paragraph.
7. If you’re serious about this stuff, you’ll want to look for outside commentary on the thing you’re reading. Especially if it’s old literature, there will be references and jokes you just won’t get unless you look outside the main text.

Your Confusion-Resistant Battle Gear

Look at that mask: a face of wonder to reflect the newfound comprehension you can gain by having the right resources.

Kafka Fuura’s Bungo page
If you’re really ready to get down with this Classical stuff but don’t want to shell out the money for your own materials just yet, this is a good place.

Tangorin’s Classical Japanese Dictionary
This online dictionary is not comprehensive by any means, but it’s in English and has some of the higher frequency items.

Weblio’s Kogo-Jiten
If you’re Rikaichan-equipped, this is a great online dictionary for Kobun. It’s in Japanese.

Classical Japanese: A Grammar by Haruo Shirane

This in particular is a great resources for those of you who are going into Bungo for the long haul. Despite being a textbook (with a companion workbook), all of the examples are from existing texts written in Kobun. Because my interest is always piqued when I see particles that carry over to modern-day usage, I personally like the historical notes Shirane provides; in them, he talks about their evolution, among other things.

A Reference Grammar of Classical Japanese Prose by Alexander Vovin

This is out of print, but it’s my favorite resource for a number of reasons. If you have access to college Interlibrary Loans, you can get your hands on a copy. Or you can make an inquiry at Blackwell’s publishing site.

The Iwanami Kogo-jiten

This is just one example of a Kobun dictionary, but it’s very comprehensive. It’s also completely in Japanese. To my knowledge, there are no English Kogo-jitens. The plus side is that this dictionary is exhaustive, so if you feel confident you’ve looked at a Bungo sentence every possible way and still don’t have a good translation, you could look in this book and find the exact obscure meaning that will make the puzzle pieces fit.

Stay Tuned!

I’m a big fan of teacups, small desserts, and manageable chunks of language-learning. If you’re the same way, stay tuned to Tofugu. I’ll be writing more about Kobun soon. Let me know in the comments if you’ve encountered Bungo before; I want to know what your experience was like!

Bonus Wallpapers!

[1280x800] ∙ [2560x1600]

Sources

• Vovin, Alexander. A Reference Grammar of Classical Japanese Prose. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. p. 74.