Noda, Wake da and Mono da: Reading Japanese Sentence Endings in Novels
Hiroki Obara · Developer
In chapter 9 of Natsume Sōseki’s Botchan, the narrator and his colleague Yamaarashi ask each other where they are from.
「君は一体どこの産だ」
「おれは江戸っ子だ」
「うん、江戸っ子か、道理で負け惜しみが強いと思った」
「きみはどこだ」
「僕は会津だ」
「会津っぽか、強情な訳だ。今日の送別会へ行くのかい」
“Where are you from, anyway?” “I’m a Tokyo man.” “A Tokyo man, huh. I thought you were a sore loser, and that explains it.” “Where are you from?” “Aizu.” “Aizu, is it. No wonder you’re so stubborn. Are you going to the farewell party today?”
Yamaarashi says 道理で…と思った, “that explains why I thought…”, and the narrator answers in the same slot with 強情な訳だ. Both have just heard where the other is from, and both say that it accounts for something they had already noticed.
のだ (no da), わけだ (wake da) and ものだ (mono da) all sit at the end of a sentence, and none of them translates into a single English word. Below, each one is read in lines from three Aozora Bunko works, with the senses given in the JMdict dictionary data.
All three are nouns
の, 訳 (わけ) and もの are all listed in dictionaries as nouns. A sentence ends with one of them followed by だ, です or である.
JMdict has an entry for のだ, with the readings のだ and んだ. Its senses include “the reason is that …”, “the fact is that …” and “the explanation is that …”, with a note that の and ん add emphasis.
訳 is glossed “reason, cause, grounds”, “meaning, sense” and “circumstances, case”. The entry for というわけ, followed by a copula such as だ, gives “this is why” and “that is the reason why”.
もの comes under the entry 物. One of its senses is marked as a formal noun often used as 〜ものだ, and it has four glosses: used to emphasize emotion or judgment; used to indicate a common occurrence in the past (after a verb in the past tense); used to indicate a general tendency; used to indicate something that should happen. The entry lists もん as a reading next to もの.
のだ: explaining, and asking why
Earlier in chapter 9 of Botchan, just before the exchange above, のだ appears twice in a row. The narrator had tried to pay Yamaarashi back the one and a half sen for a glass of ice water Yamaarashi had treated him to, and left the coins on his desk. Yamaarashi never took them. Now that the two have made up, the narrator puts the coins back in his own purse.
山嵐は君それを引き込めるのかと不審そうに聞くから、うんおれは君に奢られるのが、いやだったから、是非返すつもりでいたが、その後だんだん考えてみると、やっぱり奢ってもらう方がいいようだから、引き込ますんだと説明した。山嵐は大きな声をしてアハハハと笑いながら、そんなら、なぜ早く取らなかったのだと聞いた。
Yamaarashi asked, puzzled, whether he was taking it back, and the narrator explained that he hadn’t wanted to be treated and had meant to repay him, but on second thought it seemed better to accept, so he was taking it back. Yamaarashi laughed out loud and asked why he hadn’t taken it sooner, then.
Sōseki follows 引き込ますんだ (“so I’m taking it back”) with と説明した, “he explained”. The line ending in んだ is given as an explanation of what the narrator is doing. Yamaarashi’s なぜ早く取らなかったのだ, “why didn’t you take it sooner”, asks for the reason, and the narrator gives one: 「実は取ろう取ろうと思ってたが、何だか妙だからそのままにしておいた」, “I kept meaning to, but it felt odd, so I left it.”
In Dazai Osamu’s Run, Melos (走れメロス), のだ appears in the narration too. Near the start, the story tells why Melos, a herdsman, has come to a city ten ri from his village.
結婚式も間近かなのである。メロスは、それゆえ、花嫁の衣裳やら祝宴の御馳走やらを買いに、はるばる市にやって来たのだ。
“The wedding was close at hand. That was why Melos had come all the way to the city, to buy the bride’s clothes and food for the feast.”
Near the end, Philostratus, the pupil of Melos’s friend, tells him 「あの方は、あなたを信じて居りました」, “He believed in you”, and begs him to stop running. Melos answers:
「それだから、走るのだ。信じられているから走るのだ。間に合う、間に合わぬは問題でないのだ。人の命も問題でないのだ。私は、なんだか、もっと恐ろしく大きいものの為に走っているのだ。」
“That is why I run. I run because I am trusted. Whether I make it in time is not the question. A man’s life is not the question. I am running, somehow, for something far greater and more terrible.”
Every sentence gives his reason for running. The first, それだから、走るのだ, takes what Philostratus has just said and hands it back as the reason.
わけだ: so that’s why
The 会津っぽか、強情な訳だ at the top hears a reason, where Yamaarashi is from, and finds that it explains his stubbornness. Placed next to Yamaarashi’s 道理で…と思った, it shows the two men doing the same thing. JMdict glosses 道理で (どうりで) as “indeed” and “it’s no wonder”.
In chapter 11 of Botchan, the narrator reasons his way to a わけだ on his own:
赤シャツが果たして山嵐の推察通りをやったのなら、実にひどい奴だ。到底智慧比べで勝てる奴ではない。どうしても腕力でなくっちゃ駄目だ。なるほど世界に戦争は絶えない訳だ。
“If Red Shirt really did what Yamaarashi suspects, he is a nasty piece of work. There is no beating him in a battle of wits. It has to be force. No wonder there is always a war somewhere in the world.”
He decides that wits won’t win, so only force is left, and then comes なるほど (“I see”) with 訳だ. The わけだ sentence is a conclusion from his own reasoning that suddenly makes sense of the world as well.
In both examples, the reason appears before the わけだ: hearing where someone is from, deciding wits won’t win. When you meet わけだ, look in the sentences before it for the reason, and you will see what the speaker has just understood.
ものだ: feeling, the past, the way things are, the way things should be
All four of JMdict’s uses turn up in novels.
Emphasizing a feeling or judgment. In chapter 1 of Botchan, the narrator writes about his father:
おやじは何にもせぬ男で、人の顔さえ見れば貴様は駄目だ駄目だと口癖のように云っていた。何が駄目なんだか今に分らない。妙なおやじがあったもんだ。
“My father did nothing all day, and whenever he saw me he would say ‘You’re hopeless, hopeless’, as if it were a habit. To this day I don’t know what was so hopeless. What a strange father he was.”
In chapter 4, about the principal, whom he calls the Badger, and the head teacher Red Shirt, who are both excused from night duty, he writes よくまああんなにずうずうしく出来るものだ, “how can anyone be so brazen”. Both ものだ lines strengthen his exasperation.
Something that often happened in the past. In part 3 of Sōseki’s Kokoro, “Sensei and His Testament”, section 19, Sensei describes student lodgings in his youth:
その時分は一つ室によく二人も三人も机を並べて寝起きしたものです。
“In those days, two or three of us would often live in one room with our desks side by side.”
ものです follows the past tense 寝起きした, and よく, “often”, is there too. It was not a single event but something that commonly happened then.
A general tendency. In Run, Melos, after nearly giving up, Melos drinks from a spring, gets back on his feet and thinks:
先刻の、あの悪魔の囁きは、あれは夢だ。悪い夢だ。忘れてしまえ。五臓が疲れているときは、ふいとあんな悪い夢を見るものだ。
“That devil’s whisper a moment ago was a dream. A bad dream. Forget it. When your body is worn out, you suddenly have bad dreams like that.”
The 〜ときは, “when”, sets a condition, and the ものだ states what happens to anyone. In part 1 of Kokoro, section 12, Sensei tells the narrator 「恋の満足を味わっている人はもっと暖かい声を出すものです」, “A person who is satisfied in love speaks in a warmer voice.” It has the same shape.
Something that should be done. In part 2 of Kokoro, section 1, the narrator takes his diploma out of his bag to show his parents. It has been crushed out of shape. His father smooths it out and says:
「こんなものは巻いたなり手に持って来るものだ」
“A thing like this you carry rolled up in your hand.”
Right after, his mother adds 「中に心でも入れると好かったのに」, “You should have put something inside to keep it stiff”, and the text says she 注意した, “pointed it out” as a correction. The father’s ものだ is the same kind of correction: this is how it’s done.
How to tell them apart in a novel
From the lines above, here is where to look.
1. Look at the words around it. なぜ…のだ was a question asking for the reason. なるほど and 道理で came with わけだ. A ものだ with よく and a past-tense verb was about what often happened in the past.
2. Check whether the reason comes before it. With わけだ, the reason was in the sentences before it. A のだ sentence was itself the reason or the explanation.
3. Ask who the line is for. ものだ lines point in different directions: the narrator’s own feeling (a strange father), the way things are (bad dreams), a correction for someone else (the diploma). Whether it is narration or a line spoken to someone changes how you read it.
4. Read the casual and formal forms as the same thing. In speech you get んだ and もんだ, in polite speech のです and ものです, and in narration のである and ものである.
For more on dialogue, see Reading Dialogue in Japanese Novels. Reading Natsume Sōseki as a Japanese Learner covers where to start with Sōseki, and What Are JMdict and KANJIDIC2? explains the dictionary data.
Reading sentence endings in Niho
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