An earlier article used three sentences from Yukio Mishima’s Shiosai to learn one basic principle of Japanese word order: the predicate comes last, and description goes before the noun. This article confirms the same principle in Kokoro’s Kamakura scene, using longer, more complex sentences.
A descriptive chunk, placed before the noun
Just before Sensei is spotted, this sentence appears:
Kare wa yagate jibun no soba o kaerimite, soko ni kogonde iru nihonjin ni, hitokoto futakoto nanika itta. — He turned to look beside him after a while, and said something, a word or two, to the Japanese man crouching there. (working translation)
Soko ni kogonde iru — “crouching there” — a single chunk built from two elements, “there” and “crouching,” is placed directly before the noun nihonjin (“Japanese man”). In English, it would be natural to follow the noun with a description (a relative clause) — “a Japanese man who was crouching there.” Japanese takes the opposite order: the entire descriptive chunk is moved, as a whole, in front of the noun.
Another example — “tenugui that had fallen onto the sand”
The same paragraph offers another sentence with a similar structure.
Sono nihonjin wa suna no ue ni ochita tenugui o hiroiageteiru tokoro de atta ga… — The Japanese man had just been picking up a hand towel that had fallen onto the sand… (working translation)
Suna no ue ni ochita (“had fallen onto the sand”) is likewise a descriptive chunk modifying the noun tenugui (“hand towel”). Information about “where” and “what happened to it” is placed directly in front of the noun, exactly as it is. This structure recurs repeatedly in other scenes confirmed in the overview.
Kaisuigi o motanai watashi ni mo… — Even I, who had no swimsuit… (working translation)
The description kaisuigi o motanai (“had no swimsuit”) is likewise placed in front of the noun (technically here, the pronoun) watashi (“I”).
The principle — Japanese stacks description in front of the noun
These examples point to a single principle. In Japanese, information that modifies a noun — however long it gets — is always placed in front of that noun.
| Modifying information | Noun modified |
|---|---|
| soko ni kogonde iru (“crouching there”) | nihonjin (“Japanese man”) |
| suna no ue ni ochita (“had fallen onto the sand”) | tenugui (“hand towel”) |
| kaisuigi o motanai (“had no swimsuit”) | watashi (“I”) |
In English and many other European languages, this kind of description (a relative clause) follows the noun. Japanese runs the opposite way — it stacks description in front of the noun. This difference is one of the most basic, and yet also one of the most time-consuming to get used to, for learners of Japanese.
The predicate, at the very end of the sentence
Paired with this “modifiers first” principle is the “predicate last” principle, also confirmed in the earlier article. Let’s look at a longer sentence from the beach scene.
Kare wa wareware no haku sarumata hitotsu no hoka nanimono mo hada ni tsukete inakatta. — He wore nothing on his skin but the loincloth-style swim trunks we all wore. (working translation)
Starting from the subject kare wa (“he”), passing through a long object phrase — “the loincloth-style swim trunks we all wore, and nothing else” — the sentence only finally arrives, at the very end, at its predicate: “wore … nothing” (a verb, plus negation, plus past tense, all fused together). The most important piece of information deciding the sentence’s meaning — what happened, what the state was — is placed at the very end of the sentence. This, too, is a basic property of Japanese word order.
Worth checking as you read
First, this “modifiers first, predicates last” principle is a basic tendency of Japanese, and exceptional constructions such as inversion do exist. This article confirms only the standard word order.
Second, the article using three sentences from Mishima’s Shiosai and this article confirm the same principle using different example sentences from different works, so there is some overlap in content. Reading both side by side should make it clearer that this principle is a property of Japanese in general, not something specific to one work.
Summary
| Point | Content |
|---|---|
| Placement of modifiers | Descriptive chunks like “soko ni kogonde iru” (“crouching there”) and “suna no ue ni ochita” (“had fallen onto the sand”) are always placed before the noun |
| Contrast with English | English relative clauses follow the noun; Japanese runs the opposite way |
| Placement of the predicate | The most important information (verb, negation, tense) is placed at the end of the sentence |
| Relation between the two principles | “Modifiers first” and “predicates last” — both are basic properties of Japanese word order |
In short — Japanese is a language that stacks modifiers, however long, in front of the noun, and places its most important predicate at the very end of the sentence.