The plain-language article covered kakari-musubi, the mechanism by which particles like “zo” and “koso” determine a sentence’s ending from a distance. Here we read, in the original, how Yamada discusses this particle itself in Part I, “Word Theory,” of Nihon Bunpōron.
Starting from the history of a name
Before presenting his own term “kakari-joshi” (係助詞, “kakari particle”), Yamada first confirms how this kind of particle has traditionally been named.
こゝに係助詞と稱するものは從來係り詞と稱せられたるものにして、これらの大部分「なを除きての他は從來係り詞と稱せられたる處のものなり。
(What is here called a kakari-joshi is what has traditionally been called a kakari-shi; the great majority of these — all but “na” — are what has traditionally been called a kakari-shi.)
Even this one sentence reveals a lot about Yamada’s method. Before stating a new theory, he first confirms the history of the term itself — what has this phenomenon traditionally been called? The word “kakaru” (“to link”) itself, as the plain-language article showed, comes from the metaphor of a particle in the middle of a sentence “reaching toward” its ending. Here, Yamada is confirming that this very name had already become established among scholars of Japanese classical studies back in the Edo period.
Predecessors: Motoori Norinaga and Fujitani Nariakira
Shortly after this passage, Yamada goes on to mention two important predecessors in the study of kakari-musubi: Motoori Norinaga and his circle, and Fujitani Nariakira. Fujitani Nariakira, in his work Ayuishō (also known as Tama no O), was an early scholar who systematically discussed how “teniwoha” (particles and auxiliary verbs) determine the way a whole sentence ties together. Yamada works through these predecessors’ terms and classifications, one by one, before arriving at his own organization under the term “kakari-joshi.”
Why bother with the origin of a name?
This examination of naming, which might look trivial at first, carries real weight. The phenomenon of kakari-musubi itself had already been discovered by Edo-period scholars of Japanese classical studies, through observing real examples, and had already been given a name. Yamada’s job wasn’t to discover the phenomenon from scratch — it was to take what earlier scholars had already observed and systematically re-situate it within the larger theoretical framework of chinjutsu theory, covered in the plain-language article. The kakari particle is folded into that larger theory as something that interferes, in a special way from partway through the sentence, with chinjutsu — the function that determines the sentence’s final form.
Summary
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| The quote | The term “kakari-joshi” carries forward what had traditionally been called “kakari-shi” |
| Predecessors cited | Fujitani Nariakira (Ayuishō), Motoori Norinaga and his circle — Edo-period scholars of Japanese classical studies |
| Yamada’s actual contribution | Not discovering the phenomenon, but systematically re-situating predecessors’ observations within a larger theory |
In a nutshell — kakari-musubi wasn’t a phenomenon Yamada discovered. Edo-period scholars had already found it. Yamada’s contribution was folding it back into the larger framework of chinjutsu theory.