Hi Chris, thanks for catching this mistake! Will update on the site ASAP! Thanks for signing up to the newsletter, hope it's helping you in your studies!
When I was a university student I tried reading Mishima since everyone who was into Japanese literature was automatically into Mishima. But the text always felt too melancholically depressed, though I tried both English and Russian translations. So I never understood why everyone loved Mishima so much. But now I kind of get it ^^ Maybe it's the original style that makes it special.
Hi Victoria, thanks for your comment! Trust me, I'm the same. Much of Mishima's more popular works never really appealed to me. But then I discovered some new sides to his work. Mishima wrote a lot of light entertainment novels which are really fun to read. (This excerpt is also from one such novel.) I also love reading his essays. Which authors do you normally like to read?
That's nice to know! I think I'll try reading some other works of his.
I like many authors, it is hard to choose ^^ Probably the first one I really liked was Shusaku Endo, I read all his books I could get in my hands. He wrote a lot about a crisis of identity as many of his characters were Christians as he was himself and couldn't find to which culture they belonged since Christianity is foreign to Japanese people. I am not into religion, but while learning Japanese and living in Russia which has other social norms I kind of felt the same thing. Plus, Shusaku Endo wrote in pretty much all his books about France and French literature, and I always wondered why he found it so fascinating. I had an idea that since I like the author and the author likes France it can't be bad... So I even tried learning French xD Unfortunately, even then I couldn't understand "the magic of France~", but I still love Shusaku Endo's books.
Hi Bunsuke, thanks a lot for the very useful newsletter. I'm just starting to read literature in Japanese and I feel I struggle at times with complex sentences. Your texts and translations really helps me improve my understanding little by little.
I hope you will forgive my "noob" question but I'm finding difficult to wrap my head around the usage of ”に” in the sentence 日本人にはまちがいがないのだが. Your translation reads "(...) so there is no doubt that he is Japanese (...)". While reading the original, I (probably mistakenly) understood it as something like "to a japanese person, there is no doubt that...". Was I completely out of the way? Hope you can shed some light on this for me..
Hi Sandro, thanks so much for your comment. It's great to hear that this resource is helping you read more literature in Japanese. It's completely normal to struggle with complex sentences. No matter how far advanced you get, there will always be challenges ahead.
I think this is a great question, and I don't think you were very far off. In this case, it might be good to remember that "nominal + にはまちがいないが" means "there is no doubt that [nominal] is..., but...". This is not really a formal grammatical structure, but it is important to remember. You sometimes see other similar (formal) structures, such as に違いない ("there is no mistake that..."/"no doubt...") → かれは日本人に違いない＝there is no mistake that he is Japanese. Once you learn these kinds of other similar patterns and make them your own, the まちがいない will almost immediately become recognizable as a pattern within this category.
Conversely, I think if you were to translate your suggestion back into Japanese you would get something like 日本人にとっては間違いなく…だ, or something similar.
I hope this helps! Let me know if this is unclear.
That's really a "head slap" moment for me, as I read your answer I went back to my grammar book and found the に違いない which I had completely forgot about! It makes all sense now.
I would like to thank you again for taking the time to write a detailed answer
Hi Bunsuke! Very thankful for the piecemeal yet informative read that this newsletter provides.
For the translation of 通路, I noticed you put ‘isle’ instead of ‘aisle’ as I would have expected. Just popped in to give you a quick heads-up.
Always looking forward to the next excerpt.
Hi Chris, thanks for catching this mistake! Will update on the site ASAP! Thanks for signing up to the newsletter, hope it's helping you in your studies!
When I was a university student I tried reading Mishima since everyone who was into Japanese literature was automatically into Mishima. But the text always felt too melancholically depressed, though I tried both English and Russian translations. So I never understood why everyone loved Mishima so much. But now I kind of get it ^^ Maybe it's the original style that makes it special.
Hi Victoria, thanks for your comment! Trust me, I'm the same. Much of Mishima's more popular works never really appealed to me. But then I discovered some new sides to his work. Mishima wrote a lot of light entertainment novels which are really fun to read. (This excerpt is also from one such novel.) I also love reading his essays. Which authors do you normally like to read?
That's nice to know! I think I'll try reading some other works of his.
I like many authors, it is hard to choose ^^ Probably the first one I really liked was Shusaku Endo, I read all his books I could get in my hands. He wrote a lot about a crisis of identity as many of his characters were Christians as he was himself and couldn't find to which culture they belonged since Christianity is foreign to Japanese people. I am not into religion, but while learning Japanese and living in Russia which has other social norms I kind of felt the same thing. Plus, Shusaku Endo wrote in pretty much all his books about France and French literature, and I always wondered why he found it so fascinating. I had an idea that since I like the author and the author likes France it can't be bad... So I even tried learning French xD Unfortunately, even then I couldn't understand "the magic of France~", but I still love Shusaku Endo's books.
That's a lot of devotion to Endo! Actually, I don't think I've used him for my letter, so I'll see if I can use him for today's excerpt!
Oh, thank you! That would be great~
I found something else for today but will do Endo tomorrow👍
That's fine~ Anyway, looking forward to what you will post next time.
Hi Bunsuke, thanks a lot for the very useful newsletter. I'm just starting to read literature in Japanese and I feel I struggle at times with complex sentences. Your texts and translations really helps me improve my understanding little by little.
I hope you will forgive my "noob" question but I'm finding difficult to wrap my head around the usage of ”に” in the sentence 日本人にはまちがいがないのだが. Your translation reads "(...) so there is no doubt that he is Japanese (...)". While reading the original, I (probably mistakenly) understood it as something like "to a japanese person, there is no doubt that...". Was I completely out of the way? Hope you can shed some light on this for me..
Looking forward to the new excerpt!
Hi Sandro, thanks so much for your comment. It's great to hear that this resource is helping you read more literature in Japanese. It's completely normal to struggle with complex sentences. No matter how far advanced you get, there will always be challenges ahead.
I think this is a great question, and I don't think you were very far off. In this case, it might be good to remember that "nominal + にはまちがいないが" means "there is no doubt that [nominal] is..., but...". This is not really a formal grammatical structure, but it is important to remember. You sometimes see other similar (formal) structures, such as に違いない ("there is no mistake that..."/"no doubt...") → かれは日本人に違いない＝there is no mistake that he is Japanese. Once you learn these kinds of other similar patterns and make them your own, the まちがいない will almost immediately become recognizable as a pattern within this category.
Conversely, I think if you were to translate your suggestion back into Japanese you would get something like 日本人にとっては間違いなく…だ, or something similar.
I hope this helps! Let me know if this is unclear.
Hi Bunsuke,
That's really a "head slap" moment for me, as I read your answer I went back to my grammar book and found the に違いない which I had completely forgot about! It makes all sense now.
I would like to thank you again for taking the time to write a detailed answer
Cheers,
Sandro
You're welcome, Sandro. Anytime.