Noncompositional

[update: Sorry! It seems wordpress doesn't like title-less posts, and since I forgot to add a title the first time, links to the post would have gotten 404 errors. That post hase been deleted, and this one has a title. Those reading this by RSS who got the earlier post with no title will also get an error if they use the link included with the feed. My apologies.]

In a half-hearted attempt to at least keep my Japanese reading ability up to snuff, I’ve started reading 69 sixty-nine by MURAKAMI Ryû (村上龍*). Murakami is a prolific Japanese author, famous for his “subculture” writings, with visceral, emotional, and realistic portrayals of characters who are often depressed, nihilistic, or — as is the case with 69 — adventuresome slackers. The story (which is nicely summarized in this Wikipedia/Japan article) centers around Ken (full name YAZAKI Kensuke 矢崎剣介), a high-school student in the country town of Sasebo, Nagasaki (also the birthplace of the author), who, along with his group of friends, get caught up in the counterculture movements in 1969 Japan, and tangle with topics like Marxism, the Vietnam War, and the nearby US army base with about as much wit and wisdom as obscure-town high school students can muster.

What concerns me here is a particular turn of phrase that the narrator (Ken) has. It relies on the fact that in Japanese, the predicator of any clause is always in final position. What this means is that given a rich enough context (and world-knowledge-driven expectations), the head verb can actually be predicted long before it appears (and in many ads and newspaper headlines, it is often omitted). More than a few times Ken uses this fact to play a little joke on the reader. To wit (my translations follow):

一年、二年、三年と、僕の成績は圧倒的に下降しつつあった。理由はいろいろある。両親の離婚、弟の不意の自殺、僕自身がニーチェに傾倒したこと、祖母が不治の病にかかっていたこと、というのは全部嘘で、単純に勉強が嫌いになっただけだ。(p. 9)

「あ、俺ちょっと、カレーパンでも買うてくる」 僕は、テナガザルの檻の前で、アダマの弁当をじっと見ながらそう言った。 「半分、やるけん、一緒に食べようで」 アダマはそう言っていかにも下宿屋の弁当とぃったおかずの少ない弁当を、半分、弁当箱のふたに入れてくれた。学校から動植物園までのバス代もアダマが出してくれていたし、本来はホームルームに出席し窓ガラスを拭いていたに違いないまじめなアダマに、そこまでして貰うのは良心に恥じたので僕はていねいに断った、というのはもちろん嘘で、どうしてアダマは三個あったチクワを一個しかくれなかったのだろう、こいつはひどいケチなのではないか、将来は医者ではなく信用金庫かなんかが向いているんじゃないかと強く思いながら、三分で食べ終わったのだった。(p. 14-15)

The second one is a bit longer, but I think the context is necessary to appreciate the punch line. And now, my (probably atrocious) translations:

All through my first, second, and third years of high school, my grades had been slipping. There were several reasons: my parents’ divorce, the sudden suicide of my younger brother, my own devotion to Nietzsche, and my grandmother’s fatal disease all are total lies, and basically it was just because I despise studying. “Uh, I’m gonna buy some curry bread, or something,” I said, eyeing Adama’s* bento as we stood in front of the gibbon cage. “Hey, I’ll give you half. We can have lunch together,” Adama said. And then he actually took out his, actually sort of meager dormitory-issued bento box, and put half of the food into the box’s lid. And then I remembered, that he had even paid my bus fare from the school to the zoo, and if I hadn’t convinced him to cut class, then Adama, devoted student that he is, would surely be attending class, or cleaning the windows, and so my conscience got the better of me and I politely turned down his offer. Actually, that’s a lie, and in fact, I thought, “when he has three sausages* why is he only giving me one, the cheap bastard, he’s not going to become a doctor, he’ll be a banker or something like that,” and finished the meal in three minutes flat.

Each time Ken wants to toy with the reader like this, he uses the structure [X], to iu no wa [M] uso de, [Y], where [X] is a typically long list of properties, reasons, events, or anything that in general explains something else, [Y] is the truth, and [M] is an optional modifier of uso, ‘lie.’ This is the method used in the first passage, and in the majority of others. The kick comes from the fact that the reader is expecting something rather bland, like “were the reasons,” or “all were factors.” On the other hand, the second passage has another type, not as common in the book, where the [X] is actually a fully formed sentence, which is then nominalized and called a lie. Here the reader just expects the sentence to end, but is faced with a comma instead of a full stop.

And what exactly are the mechanics? Well, it involves most importantly the construction [X] to iu no wa [Y]. It’s a complicated bit of grammar, though very common in both writing and speech. The overall function is to give some detailed explanation (Y) of the content of X (often a complement-clause-taking noun like ‘fact’), or a definition (Y) of some abstract concept X (like ‘love’). As for the syntax:

First, to is the “quotative marker,” sometimes called a complementizer, and it often combines with iu ‘(lit.) say,’ as a way to enclose a noun phrase or clause for further modification or grammatical gymnastics. For instance, gengo-gaku ga muzukashii to iu jijitsu wa minna ni shirarete-iru is word-for-word ‘linguistics-NOM difficult to iu fact-TOP everyone-BY known’ (I think you can guess what the meaning).

Second, following the to iu we’ve got no, which is like a generic noun similar to English one, and would take the place of jijitsu in the sentence above. For instance, akai no o kure ‘Give me a red one.’ And finally, following the whole nominalized funfest, everyone’s favorite Japanese particle, the topic marker wa.

So now, we’ve got the whole mess of clauses or phrases, nominalized and topicalized and ready to be commented on. And how does our illustrious narrator chose to comment on them? He says uso de, which is the noun ‘lie,’ following by de, the continuative form of the copula da, which lets you introduce some loosely connected narrative, like a contrasting state-of-affairs, or a consequence of some reason, or any other number of things (see any of the articles on TE-linkage by Yoko Hasegawa for more info). And of course, Ken choses to give a contrasting set of “true,” reasons, which constitute the punch line.

This particular turn of phrase is used quite often throughout the book, not just once or twice but at least four times in the first 15 pages (I stopped counting). Though the comedic value is much depreciated after the first few goes, the method is still effective, especially as a sort of meta-awareness that the narrator has as he pseudo-looks back on his life (it’s not clear what age the narrator is). The kids in the story are trying to emulate all of the counter-cultural activity they see in Japan’s and Europe’s big cities, but often their motivations are much simpler than those of university movements: they don’t want to raise awareness of the Vietnam war, they want the cute girl (who is infatuated with rebels) to like them. And so Murakami can portray these kids as true members of the student movement (at least for a few lines at a time) before dashing the expectations of the reader, saying, “Hah! Of course you thought that’s what these kids were like! But actually, they just want to have fun.”

• Trivia time! (1) The duo of famous authors, Murakami Ryû and Murakami Haruki (no relation), are sometimes called W-Murakami (Ｗ村上), the ‘W’ standing for ‘double.’ Cute, eh? (2) No, Adama is not a native Japanese name. It’s a nickname given to Ken’s friend YAMADA Tadashi, who resembles the French singer Adamo (sorry, no clue on who that might be/have been). (3) Actually, chikuwa, a thin, short sausage made of ground fish meat.