Week 3: 人間失格

[Phryne]

Woohoo, made it through week 3! It was pretty rough, so I’m just pleased I didn’t give up, even if I’m not really on schedule anymore

Thanks for your thoughts about the cherry blossom passage, @rodan. These thoughts never occurred to me when I was reading (i.e. ploughing through) the text! I’d be keen to read some more literary analyses, but I imagine the bulk of the secondary literature is in Japanese…

This bit of translation amused me

たいへんほめられ、さらに二枚三枚と、お化けの絵を画きつづけ

It seems to use と in this manner:

But Keene translates it as:

He was very enthusiastic, and I painted two or three more, plus a picture of a ghost

I tried to stick with extensive reading, but I always get sucked into matters of detail…

海の、波打際、といってもいいくらいに海にちかい岸辺に、真黒い樹肌の山桜の、かなり大きいのが二十本以上も立ちならび

What are those bolded のs doing there? I don’t really understand how the sentence structure works there.

生れてはじめて、謂わば他郷へ出たわけなのですが

I don’t really recognise the way わけ is being used here. Keene just translates:

This was my first experience living in a strange town.

What am I missing…?

[rodan]

@Phryne

海の、波打際、といってもいいくらいに海にちかい岸辺に、真黒い樹肌の山桜 の 、かなり大きい の が二十本以上も立ちならび

What are those bolded のs doing there? I don’t really understand how the sentence structure works there.

I’m not 100% either so I’d be curious to hear any other takes, but I think maybe the first bolded の is just the regular one but with a comma after it, and the second one is the nominalizing kind.
So like, if かなり大きい の would be “fairly big ones” and 真黒い樹肌の山桜 の would be “of the black barked cherry trees” then like this it would be like, “of black barked cherry trees, more than twenty fairly big ones were in a row…”

I think he could have just said かなり大きい の真黒い樹肌の山桜, but he wanted to introduce the trees first and then elaborate on them, so it ends up 真黒い樹肌の山桜の、かなり大きいの.

@Phryne

生れてはじめて、謂わば他郷へ出たわけなのですが

I don’t really recognise the way わけ is being used here. Keene just translates:

This was my first experience living in a strange town.

What am I missing…?

わけ’s kind of hard to verbalize, (Jisho tries with “conclusion from reasoning, judgement or calculation based on something read or heard; reason; cause; meaning; circumstances; situation​”) but I think this is the same kind of わけ as in like, “わけではない” (“it’s not the case that…” ish) just positive.

Like he’s concluding it was his first time, or he’s just emphasizing that conclusion/the fact of it for what he’s about to say next.

Like I’d maybe translate it over-literally as something like:
“This would have been the first time since I was born that I left for a so-called ‘strange land’ but…”
(I don’t know how the sentence ends, but I could imagine, e.g. “… I took to it like a fish to water”)
and you can maybe see how that might be a little different from:
“for the first time since I was born I left for a so-called ‘strange land’ but…”
(different endings spring to mind like e.g. “… soon had to return home because of circumstances.”)
(which is more what I think a わけless version would sound like)

I’d say the translation does something similar in a slightly different way by using “my first experience.”

Does that help at all? I’m not sure how clear that was…

[Phryne]

Thanks! The second bit makes total sense to me. With regards to the first question, I can see why there would be a の in かなり大きいの (the nominalising thing makes sense), but I don’t see why that first の should be there? I thought you used counters after the noun and particle, like:

山桜 (noun) が (particle) 二十本 (counter) 以上も立ちならび.

So then, if you want to add the extra qualification it would end up being:

山桜、かなり大きいのが二十本以上も立ちならび.

Is the extra の there just to make sure 山桜 isn’t left hanging all particle-less…?

[rodan]

I’m honestly not sure! And probably not really the one to ask at the end of the day (feeling lately very much like my reading intuition has heavily outpaced my formal grammar ability), so perhaps someone else can chime in better.

Jisho has

substitutes for “ga” in subordinate phrases​

as one of the usages of の though, so maybe it’s in that ballpark if が would be more appropriate?
(I’d be hard-pressed to say exactly which of Dazai’s many clauses are subordinate or uh regular ordinate though)

[rodan]

I was kinda curious about the Tokyo tourist sites he didn’t bother to go to - so if you want to be more of a tourist than ol’ 葉, it was pretty fun strolling around in google maps to look at these things:

明治神宮

楠木正成像 (on the grounds of the old castle where stuff like the inperial palace and Budokan are now)

Graves of the 47 Ronin at 泉岳寺

I was kinda curious their locations relative to the district we talked about before (where he’s staying at now if I remember right)
So here’s a rough hasty reconstruction:

The blue is around where the cafe he goes in the start of the next part would be, based on a post I found about where the defunct place name 蓬莱町 would be today.

Just kinda fun to fill in a little spacial awareness.