May 1st Daily Reading ブラックジャックによろしく Manga

Japanese Language Reading
1

This is a reading comprehension exercise which aims to put the community in charge of the activity. I’ve requested this original message to be a wiki.

How can I participate?
Click on the :arrow_forward:︎ to reveal the text.

★The rules have been updated. Please read the new one.

Rules↓

①Choose one of the letters from the list below. Claim your letter by posting a reply in the thread here. That is so two people don’t end up doing the same letter.
②Edit your ‘claim reply’ with a vocabulary section where you list the vocabulary words and explain what they mean.
③In a reply to your ‘claim reply’, develop your interpretation. This will help people understand and learn from your explanation.
④When discussing the content of the manga, please begin your message with the letter you are addressing. This allows people to know right away about which strip you are talking about.

Places and names↓
  • 斉藤 英二郎 (さいとう えいじろう): the main character. He is an idealist who wants to be a doctor to help people as opposed to become rich.
  • 永禄大学: the Eiroku (or Eternal Fortune) university, where Saitou graduated. Abbreviation: 永大.
  • 誠同病院: Seidou hospital, a private hospital where Saitou did part-time job at night (on Episode 1). It paid well but was in conflict with Saitou’s values and beliefs.
  • 服部 脩（はっとり おさむ）: director of Seidou hospital.
  • 牛田 克雄（うしだ かつお）: doctor that worked at night at Seidou hospital. He told (on Ep.1) Saitou about how that hospital prefers traffic accidentees as their treatment is not reglemented and can be billed four times more. And tries to get back in contact with Saitou, by phone (Ep.2) then by letter (Ep.3).
  • 出久根 邦弥（でくね くにや）: fellow intern that (Ep.2 & 3) trains with Saitou.
  • 第一外科 : 1st surgery department. Eiroku U. follows the “super rotate” method, in which interns train on various different services in rotation; at Ep. 2 & 3 Saitou trains here.
  • 春日部 一郎（かすかべ いちろう）: nicknamed “God’s hands”, is a professor at the Eiroku University hospital that just do initial incisions, and otherwise is interested only in study of eels.
  • 白鳥 貴久（しらとり たかひさ）: doctor at the 1st surgery department that did the actual operation (Ep.2) at which “God’s hands” appeared. He is the instructor of Saitou and Dekune.
  • 金子 敏夫（かねこ としお）: the 75 year old person that got the surgery (Ep.2). Pr. Shiratori assigns Saitou to take care of him; the operation was successful, but he is still unconscious.

p. 8-9

image
image1237×808 504 KB

Direct link to the pages so you can zoom in

Currently available: F, I;

*There is no C, my bad.

Done: A-E, H
  • A : 意外だったな… 白鳥先生って患者さんの前では笑顔もみせるんだ
    It was surprising, doctor Shiritori showed a smiling face in front of the patient
  • B : 斉藤: だけど点滴をすすめない医者なんで珍しいよね
    Saitou: However, a doctor who doesn’t recommend an i.v drip is unusual, don’t you agree
  • C : (いいえ、C じゃなかった)
  • D : 点滴の成分なんてそんなもんだし注射料も入れると一本千円以上するからな…
    The composition of IV drops, that’s how it is! Because when including the price of injection it sums more than 1000JPN per bottle
    患者は一割負担だから100円しか払わないけど…
    However, the patient only pays 100JPN, as he suports a tenth of the costs
  • E : 斉藤: 確かに病院はちゃんと千円もうかってる……
    そういうムダが積もり積って国の医療財政を圧迫するんだよな……
    *Saitou: Certainly the hospital is easily earning thousands of yen……That kind of waste accumulates and puts pressure on the medical finances of the country.
  • H : 違う！ 僕は今度こそあの当直での失敗を乗り越えたいんだ‼
    Wrong! This time I want to overcome this failure.

Miscellenous

★(Links to the manga online, previous reading exercises) ↓

May reading exercises - 五月の読書練習

第3話 ７５歳の値段

日 月 火 水 木 金 土
29日 30日 1日 2日
3日 4日 5日 6日 7日 8日 9日
10日 11日 12日 13日 14日 15日 16日
17日 18日 19日 20日 21日 22日 23日
24日 25日 26日 27日 28日 29日 30日
31日

第1話 研修医の夜 : start of reading exercises (on external forum)
第2話 ウナギとゴッドハンド : start of reading exercises (on external forum); then on wanikani
第3話 ７５歳の値段 : start of reading exercises

The Manga Available Online for Free
Episode 3 : 第3話 ７５歳の値段
Episode 2 : 第2話 ウナギとゴッドハンド
Episode 1 : 第1話 研修医の夜
Jisho: dictionary

★Formatting Guidelines and ideas↓

Color Coding

Finally asked and found out how to color code:

\color{red} \text{This is Red}

put a “$” before and after that, with a space in between.

1 Like
2

Claiming A:

@arlo
Please make it a wiki, thank you.

Close-up

image
image659×855 173 KB

意外だった『な』
意外【いがい】(~な adj.) unexpected, surprising;

It was surprising

Q #1:
意外 is a ~な adjective. Am I right to say that was this adjective is modifying is an ellipsis here?

2 Likes
3

A(2):

《白鳥先生って①患者さん『の』前『では』笑顔もみせるん②だ
①@ayamedori I think you told me that って could be the equivalent of 『は』, am I misremembering? Is it the case here?

② the んだ = のだ, right?

笑顔もみせる should be parsed as: 笑顔『も』みせる

も: inclusive particle;
みせる【見せる】Ichidan v., “to show, to display”;
んだ/のだ: bring emphasis and/or explanation;

1 Like
4

I’ll give you a relatively short answer and leave @ayamedori to add any ideas she might like to share.
① Yes, って = は here, you’re right. って is a short form of という, so you can think of 白鳥先生って as ‘talking about Dr. Shiratori,…’
② Yup, you’re right. んだ = のだ at the end of a sentence is always true except if the んだ is part of a verb in the past tense. E.g. 読よむ→読んだ. So if you can find a complete verb in front of んだ, it’s really just のだ.

2 Likes
5

Re: A 1 & 2

For me, this is really well vulgarised you have my gratitude for taking the time of putting the information out in a way which I can easily access it.

① Yes, って = は here, you’re right. って is a short form of という, so you can think of 白鳥先生って as ‘talking about Dr. Shiratori,…’

This is also very clear and a revelation to me. They both express about but one does it through という while the other is a strict particle は.

My interpretation for this:
It was surprising, doctor Shiritori showed a smiling face in front of the patient

1 Like
6

Claiming B

斉藤: だけど点滴をすすめない医者なんで珍しいよね

Vocab and Analysis

However/IV drip/(direct object of)recommend-not(not full verb form)doctor/なんだ/unusual/よね

  • だけど however
  • 点滴 (てんてき) intravenous (i.v.) drip
  • をすすめない not recommend; Verb 勧める(すすめる)(to recommend, advise, encourage), present tense negative. The を marks what isn’t advised here, which is “i.v. drip”.
  • 医者 (いしゃ) doctor
  • なんで (after 2 days of discussion, I feel pressured to get this “right” LOL) THE MISTAKE THAT I made the other day (yesterday?) was not reaching far enough back in the sentence to select the phrase this “thing that’s being asserted”, all of which is unusual (according to the following Adj.). I’m taking everything after however/だけど.
    Crikey! It looks like this entire phrase “点滴をすすめない” is acting like an adjective to describe “doctor” (“doctor who doesn’t recommend an i.v. drip”) because the doctor isn’t marked ahead of time with the subject particle は!
  • 珍(めずら)しい. 珍しい rare, unusual ("い-adjective).
  • よね wouldn’t you agree?

Saitou: However, a doctor who doesn’t recommend an i.v drip is unusual, don’t you agree

1 Like
7

Claiming H.

①違(ちが)う！

②僕(ぼくの)『は』今度(こんど)こそあの当直(とうちょく)での失敗(しっぱい)『を』…

I have a question about 失. I’ve been trying to find words based on radicals more to become accustomed to identifying them and integrating them as building blocks.

How can you tell which radical you’re supposed to use? For 失, I tried:

this

image
image856×244 34.1 KB

… but it didn’t appear. I suppose it’s because there’s a vertical stroke in the middle which invalidates it as a radical. I then try 大 as a radical and sure enough I found it. Technically though, I think both my choices are components of the kanji, how is the classifying radical determined then?

8

D.

(I’ll do D)

Transcription:

点滴の成分なんてそんなもんだし注射料も入れると一本千円以上するからな…

患者は一割負担だから100円しか払わないけど…

...about transcription

talking about reading guessing… I didn’t remember 成分; but I know 成田 (なりた, a place near the capital, where the international airport has been built) and 平成 (へいせい, the previous Era, 1989-2019); as it sould be an ON-reading I tried “seifun”, wrong, then “seibu”, right

点滴(てんてき), 一本(いっぽん), 千円(せんえん), 以上(いじょう), 入れる(いれる), 患者(かんじゃ), 円(えん) I could type them all, either they are in my known vocabulary or still fresh in memory from newly learned ones.

注射(ちゅうしゃ), 料(りょう) and 払う(はらう) are words that came recently in the history; but visibly I had forgotten them…so I had to search them (through the components matrix) as well as 割, 負 and 担.

Interpretations:

点滴の成分なんてそんなもんだし注射料も入れると一本千円以上するからな…

The composition of IV drops, that's how it is! Because when including the price of injection it sums more than 1000JPN per bottle

(I’m trying the decomposition; bur for some particles I find it easier to just copy it than trying to find something in English)

点滴の成分なんてそんなもんだし
IV drip [の] ingredients / what? / that sort of / thing / is / し

注射料も入れると一本千円以上するからな…
injection / cost [also] to put in [when] / one-(cylindric thing) / 1000 / yen / up and above / does / [because][な]

  • 成分 : ingredients, composition
  • そんなもんだ = そんなものだ, “is (a) thing like that”; it seems to be also an expression like “that’s how it is!”, “c’est la vie!”
  • し : at end of phrase, gives a reason
  • 注射料 : cost (料) of injection 注射
  • 一本 : one (cylindric thing); so one IV bottle here
  • 以上 : from some limit and above.

患者は一割負担だから100円しか払わないけど…

However, the patient only pays 100JPN, as he suports a tenth of the costs

患者は一割負担だから100円しか払わないけど…
patient [topic] one-10th / supporting the cost / is / because / 100 / yen / only / not paying / however

  • 一割 : one tenth; 割 （わり) is a counter for the 10th part of something.
  • 負担 (ふたん) : responsability, burden (particularly, in this case, the burden of supporting the cost of something)
  • しか + negative verb : only + possitive verb ; 100円しか払わない = to pay only 100 yen
1 Like
9

It is! Glad you remembered :smile:

@Jonapedia Another exception is of course when a word simply ends in ん. Nothing else to add!

2 Likes
10

矢 isn’t a component of 失; it would be if the vertical bit on top of 失 were a separate stroke I think, but both kanji have the same stroke count. Here, under 「矢」を構成に含む漢字 you can see a list of kanji that include 矢 but not necessarily as their 部首/radical. There’s no such thing as a fail-safe trick to figuring out which component of a kanji is the classifying radical, unfortunately - usually it’s the “most important” component and you might be able to guess by its meaning, but in the end it’s best to use a kanji dictionary if you want to be sure.

2 Likes
11

Re: H

②僕(ぼくの)『は』今度(こんど)こそあの当直(とうちょく)での失敗(しっぱい)『を』乗(の)り越(こ)たいんだ‼

Analysis

There’s んだ there but I won’t ask if if’s a substitute for のだ.

So 僕(ぼく) is the topic (『は』) of the sentence but it was preceded by 違(ちが)う which means ‘‘you’re wrong’’! I know because he said the same thing before in episode 2 I think.

今度(こんどこそ) and which followed by a new word for me こそ which… means ‘‘for sure’’ for what precedes. So, “You’re wrong, for sure this time…”. The dictionary marks こそ as a particle too. This is so interesting, I love Japanese.

あの当直(とうちょく): That… but then I’m not sure how to word this in English. This “job” comes to mind but that’s not it. That ''assignment" is the closest I can think of.

で+の so manner of action + relationship の. @Jonapedia, would you say の in this instance is this equivalent to the possessive 's?

失敗(しっぱい) means blunder, failure… and finally 乗(の)り越(こ)えたい is the desiderative form of 乗(の)り越(こ)える and んだ is のだ ''to bring attention to".

Wrong! This time I want to overcome this failure.

I realize this is worded awkwardly but I’m confused as to how 失敗(しっぱい) and 乗(の)り越(こ)える work together. You don’t really overcome a failure, you correct it, you fix it. I didn’t want to stray to far from what my dictionary said though for fear of making a mistake.

1 Like
12

Some kanji, particularly pictographic ones, don’t have a clear radical (I’m using “radical” as the key for classification, and not as just “component”); they may have been created before the idea of classifying trough radicals (and making a list of them) appeared.

For 失 it’s usual decomposition is as : ⿰丿夫 (that is how wanikani does too; as 夫 doesn’t exists as a radical, I would have expected it to be under 丿 … but it is actually under 大 … (yes, sometimes it is surprising; and there may even be in some cases discrepancies between dictionaries); probably some inconsistency perpetuated by tradition.

If you look at wiktionary 失, its origin is purely pictographic.

(PS: I have seen modern Chinese dictionaries don’t use the traditional radical list, but instead a much smaller list of “stroke types” (I think there are 8 or 9 basic strokes); so the classification is 1. ttype of the first stroke, 2. total number of strokes)

1 Like
13

Claiming G:

Mostly because I want to know what Saitou is getting upset about.

14

In my humble opinion as a Chinese speaker, I think most characters that are not obviously split into components should be treated as single blocks. Of course, it’s not always true that they can’t be split into blocks: if my memory serves me, 言げん (げん is just one possible on’yomi, BTW) is made up of a mouth and lines representing a tongue sticking out, along with a dot representing the movement of the tongue during speech (think of the ‘movement lines’ in manga and anime).

However, most of these ‘simple’ kanji are single units that can only be broken down by delving into their pictorial origins, which isn’t always useful for understanding more complex kanji, even if it’s interesting. I can draw a tic-tac-toe grid just as easily as a square with four straight lines, and knowing the lines are straight doesn’t tell me anything about what the shapes mean, if you know what I mean.

As @ayamedori said, there are no foolproof rules for identifying the 部首. I’d say they usually give a clue into the domain (clothing, shelter, illness, agriculture etc) or element (fire, water, metal, rain, wood etc) to which the kanji is linked, but that’s not always clearly the case. I found a Chinese source with some general tips (it’s a page on dictionary usage), like giving left, top, external and central components priority, as well as looking up the ‘larger’ or more complex components in multi-component kanji (the ones with three or more blocks), or looking up the components with visual meaning rather than those that give (on’yomi) pronunciation information. These usually work, but I can already think of one extremely common exception. Ultimately though, 部首 is a dictionary classification system, and at least some of it is based on traditions and conventions. You might one day have an intuitive sense of which component in a kanji is the 部首, but it’s unlikely that you’ll be 100% right all the time. It’s more important to gradually gain awareness of the different components and their meanings, while accepting that some kanji are just monolithic blocks.

EDIT: PS: if you spend enough time staring at ancient scripts like Oracle Bone Script and Seal Script, you might eventually start to 'see' how modern characters evolved from the ancient ones.

For instance, I have a basic idea of the rough shape of the ancient symbols for hands, so when I read that 失しつ represents a hand dropping an object, I had a rough idea of what that referred to. (The hand is actually all the strokes except the one in the bottom right-hand corner, which is written last. That last stroke represents the falling object, or the path of the object. It’s not at all obvious even if you know 手=hand, because you need to know how the ancient symbols were codified into modern characters with sharper shapes.)

Most of this knowledge comes in as an afterthought though, and it’s only useful as general knowledge for deepening your appreciation of kanji. For practical purposes, just try to remember a reading of 失, along with its basic meaning of ‘loss’.

2 Likes
15

One more reply and I’ll stop for today. Don’t want to keep hogging the discussion. First of all, there are some minor transcription errors: ぼくの wasn’t in the original, and it’s 乗り越 え たい. I understand that you probably just missed/added some kana by accident while trying to start the analysis as soon as possible, so no worries.

As for your question,

You’re right that he should probably ‘make amends’ or otherwise ‘repair the damage’, but perhaps it’s a matter of mindset. He might see that failure as a mental block or obstacle to success, or as a sort of past trauma that he needs to move past. That’s why he feels the need to ‘overcome’ or ‘get past’ his failure. 乗のり越こえる comes from 乗る=‘to climb/board’ and 越える=‘to move past/go beyond’, so it’s ‘to move past by getting up on’, which is to say, ‘to overcome’. It’s a very visual image: he needs to ‘climb over’ his failure and ‘get past’ it in order to defeat it, in a sense.

16

E

斉藤: 確かに病院はちゃんと千円もうかってる……
そういうムダが積もり積って国の医療財政を圧迫するんだよな (fixed, thanks @YanagiPablo)

E Analysis including Vocab

確かに病院はちゃんと千円もうかってる……
Surely/に/hospitalは(subject)/Chan?!/1000¥/profited…

  • 確(たし)かに (tashika ni) certainly, surely
  • 病院(びょういん) hospital
    ちゃんとadverb “perfectly”(exactly, properly). I put “easily” here, because when are clearing a lot of cash, they are certainly don’t, and proper sounds legal and approved, and “exactly” is too specific the amount.
  • 千円 1000¥ I think this makes more sense as a plural (which Japanese doesn’t specify, so it should be permitted)
  • 儲(もう)かってる. 儲かるVerb “to be profitable” “to yield a profit”; 儲けるVerb “to make a profit” (earn/gain/get). I think it’s enduring state of being use of て form, thus “is profitable”
    Google said:
    Certainly the hospital is making 1000¥. I interpret it thusly: Certainly the hospital is easily earning thousands of yen.

そういうムダが積(もり積って国の医療財政を圧迫するんだよな

  • そういうthat kind of, such
  • ムダが (muda 無駄) “waste” subject with が
    積(つ)もり積って Verb 積もるtsumori “to pile up”, accumulate. I expected this to be idiom meaning something like “piled deeper deeper”. I think this is pronounced “つもりつもって” even though didn’t write the も the second time (it’s like part the kanji?)
  • 国の医療財政the country’s medical finances or the country’s health care budget. 療 (ryo?) medical treatment/therapy; 財政 (zaisei) finances; 財(zai) goods (fortune/wealth/assets/money); we know it well from 財布(zaifu) wallet. 政(sei) is government, its kanji is in 政府(seifu) government, 政治(seiji) politics, 政策(seisaku) policy, and 政権(seiken) administration.
  • を圧迫する Verb “to opress”
  • んだ geez! Again, I blank after 2 days of discussion on this exact thing. のだ, informal form. At here here I can see that it’s following the full plain form verb. I really liked the discussion of んだ at wasabi. In the present case, the んだis marking the conclusion of Saitou’s “Discovery” about the effect (on country’s budget) of the hospital charging (what Saitou seems to believe is excessive) fees for medical services.
  • よな wouldn’t you agree
    What Google said: That kind of waste accumulates and puts pressure on the medical finances of the country. I’m almost ashamed about it, but in this case, I believe that it is the best Interpretation!

Certainly the hospital is making thousands of yen……That kind of waste accumulates and puts pressure on the medical finances of the country.

Finally finished! Guess what? There is A LIMIT to how many times you can edit a post. I got booted off the board for 4-5 hours!!

18

@Shannon-8
Why not up jump in with your own interpretation instead of google? Worse that can happen is that you’re wrong which will point out about what you need to learn more. Google can also be way off due to the importance of context in Japanese. If you’re unsure about your answer and need reassurance before posting, might as well check the fan translation, it’s probably a lot more reliable than google. None of my business, I know, I know. Just be wary of google and its translations and also, I’m personally interested about you think about it.

I’ve asked around and found this website for Ruby conversion. You might like it.

G Part 1:

《無理（むり）して がんばる事ねーよ》

Question ①: がんばる is a verb, to persevere but here it precedes 事 and is therefore attributive to it. English doesn’t have verbs which act as adjectives to nouns. Unless you mean a gerund like “a running shoe”. In がんばる事, what is the nature of かんばる?

Unless I should approach this with a different mindset, 無理して がんばる all describe 事 but that doesn’t make them adjectives as in: “My dog is the one who bit the postman and barked all night.”

G Part 2:

《どうせ給料3万8千円のままだし》

Japanese English Commentary
どうせ anyhow
給料【きゅうりょう】 salary, wages

What is ままだし? Is it, まま :heavy_plus_sign: だ(です) :heavy_plus_sign: し?

1 Like
19

@Zizka, usually I only put in the Google translate when it is waaay off, because I like to demonstrate that it’s wrong and “nit pick”. But yesterday I decided to put the machine translation in AS A PLACEHOLDER because I saw that MY INTERPRETATION was taking a while (and in fact, I ended up getting cut off 4 hours by the board on top of my stepping away for personal stuff. I wanted you all to have a temporary reference in case it affected the Interpretation of YOUR sectionsんだ. (HaHa explanation-ending joke) It was expedient

1 Like
20

Oh my, sorry to hear about getting cut four hours :pensive:. Accurate use of んだ thought, I guess every cloud has a silver lining.:wink:

21

Hi, dropping by again to contribute/comment/edit. I’ll provide collapsed (‘hide details’) sections and tag each person I address so you can each find your section faster, and only the sections that interest you.

@Shannon-8

I think it's just 'a thousand yen', as in '...the hospital has made a thousand yen...'.

In the comic, the one speaking isn’t Saitou, but rather his friend (IDK his name because I’m not really following the story), and the text in E is a continuation of what he said in D. In D, he says that one IV drip costs more than ¥1000, so it’s logical to conclude that he’s discussing how much the hospital makes from one IV drip in E. もうかってる, being the present progressive form, has two possible meanings: 1. is making money 2. has made money. The reason being that both are present states.

Also, I believe that 確かに here means ‘indeed’ rather than ‘certainly’, the reason being that Saitou’s friend ends his previous remark with けど, which means ‘but’ or ‘even though’ (depends on how the sentence is translated, but it essentially indicates a contrast between two clauses/ideas). Taken together, the two speech bubbles next two the line separating the panels read (I’m trying to translate without changing the word order too much, so forgive me for using slightly less common translations of words like だから):
The patient has a one-tenth share to pay(lit. burden/responsbility), so he just pays 100 yen, but…the hospital has indeed確かに earned 1000 yen…

‘Thousands of yen’ would probably be written as 数すう千円 (several/a few thousand yen) or 何なん千円も (many thousand yen).

Also, Zizka’s site for Ruby conversion works! Just remove the %5D that somehow got tagged onto the end of the link.

@Zizka

Here, unless I'm quite mistaken, こと should be written in hiragana (according to formal grammar rules), because it's a nominaliser, so it's performing a grammatical function and has lost its original meaning.

The rule is that a word which also serves a grammatical function, like あげる、もらう、できる、こと、もの and the like, should only be written with kanji when they are used in their ‘original’ sense (e.g. ‘to receive (a literal concrete or abstract thing)’ for もらう, as in プレゼントを貰もらう). The Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs (the 文化庁, part of the MEXT) has an PDF on those rules somewhere, the relevant parts of which I pushed through maybe a year ago, when I less comfortable with Japanese and trying to learn the ‘correct’ forms. You should be able to find it if you google 「こと 事 違い and look out for a bunka.go.jp address. However, the rules aren’t always easy to apply. (For instance, is it そんな事 or そんなこと? Depends on what そんな represents and whether こと really means ‘matter’ or ‘affair’. I’d stick with the second, but you can argue it’s the first.) They also frankly aren’t followed very often: even the Imperial Hamarikyu Gardens use 〜て下さい instead of てください on their garden entry permission chips, and in novels, kanji are preferred for almost everything, with furigana by the side for rarer kanji. (I’m talking about light novels, whose text is usually written vertically. I don’t know if there are scholarly books that contain no furigana even for the rarest kanji.) I believe the point is to save space.

The block you should be looking at is in fact 無理して がんばる事, which is ‘the act of 無理してがんばる’. That’s how you can parse こと in such verb-noun structures. 無理してがんばる is literally ‘to try hard doing the impossible’, which you might also translate as ‘to make an effort to force oneself’, or simply ‘to try to do the impossible’. I’ve seen (or rather, heard) 無理する translated as ‘to force oneself’, but it can also mean ‘to overwork/strain oneself’ and so on.

By the way, ねーよ=ないよ, in case that was causing confusion.

The break-down you provided it correct. し indicates a justification. What needs to be explained is まま, which generally means 'state/manner/way' (these probably aren't translations you'll get in an EN-JP dictionary, because it's not treated as a noun even though I think it acts like one). The thing is that these 'states' or 'ways' are usually pre-defined in some sense, and まま rarely appears alone.

I needed to spend a really long time (at least an hour) searching for information because I couldn’t understand for the life of me why the most common kanji for まま is 儘. I know the simplified version in Chinese, but it made no sense, because it modern Chinese, 尽 (the simplified form of 儘) usually means ‘to the fullest extent’. It’s not even a noun or used like まま in Japanese. Worse, there are two other kanji for まま – 随 (follow) and 任 (according to/assign to) – that seem vaguely related to each other, but which have no link to 儘 in modern Chinese whatsoever! Anyway, what I found in the end was that in Classical Chinese (which is closer to the Chinese that Japan took kanji from), 儘 had a similar meaning to 随 and 任, and they all roughly relate to the idea of ‘following something/someone’s will’ or ‘leaving someone to do as they please’. (See the link?) That’s why it’s used in expressions like 思いのままに (lit. in the manner of one’s thoughts aka as one pleases) or 仰おおせのままに (as ordered (by a superior)).

Another possibility is for it to refer to a current state, like in 見るまま (the manner that one sees). A more elaborate example would be the possible words of a father rushing over to a hospital after work to see his injured daughter, only to meet a nurse leaving the ward after helping his daughter to turn in for an afternoon nap. (We have a tendency to need extra rest in the hospital, after all.) As the nurse turns around to wake his daughter, since she has just fallen asleep, the father tells the nurse, 「寝たままにしておいてください。私は待てますから。」i.e. ‘Let her sleep for now, please. (Because) I can wait.’ He then goes into the ward and quietly takes a seat beside the bed. In both of these examples, a certain status quo is maintained or referred to.

As such, you could think of Saitou’s friend as saying, ‘Anyhow, (we’ll) still get a 38000-yen salary [justification]’, because 給料3万8千円のまま is the pre-existing state of having a salary of 38000 yen. (They’ll be paid whether they fight the problem of excessive medical expenses or not.) A more literal translation would be ‘Anyhow, it’ll be the 38000-yen salary status quo’, but ‘status quo’ isn’t the only possible meaning of まま, as I showed in my detailed explanation in the previous paragraph.

I’ll leave you all to add on whatever you want for F and I. I’ve been staring at questions related to this page for about 4h on and off. I’m gonna take a break and/or take a look at the May 2nd page.

3 Likes