ということです

This is How to Japanese, a monthly newsletter with something about Japan/Japanese and a dash of いろいろ.

日本・日本語： No more he said, she said

Earlier this year on the podcast, I mentioned the Japanese book I’m currently reading in fits and starts: 最長片道切符の旅 (The Longest One-way Train Ticket Journey) by Miyawaki Shunzō. I discovered it via the Wikipedia page for the longest one-way train ticket, 長片道切符 (Saichō katamichi kippu), which is an interesting exercise in railway logistics: Find the longest possible one-way train ride in Japan that does not complete more than one loop (if it circles) and doesn’t double back on itself. Due to the addition, adjustment, and abandonment of routes in the country, the route has changed greatly over the years but in general runs from Hokkaido south to Kyushu or from Kyushu north to Hokkaido. Obviously this involves the local lines and not the Shinkansen and lots of zigzagging back and forth across the islands as the rider moves north or south.

On the third day of his longest one-way train ride, Miyawaki is still just getting started in Hokkaido, traveling from Nemuro to Monbetsu on October 15, 1978. At Kerochi Station, he steps off the train to look at some trees and asks the conductor if they are white birch, which they are not. 

He then has this passage:

このあたりは全国版の時刻表には掲載されていない臨時乗降場が多い。計呂地のつぎの志撫子もそのひとつで、そこから乗ってきた赤いトレーニングパンツのおばさんが私の前の席に坐っている。乗ってきたときからちょっと生臭い匂いが漂っていたけれど、魚の生臭さとはちがって食欲をそそるような匂いである。私は生ガキが食べたくなり、その匂いの素を確認したいと思った。しかし、貴女はなぜ生臭いのか、と訊ねるわけにもいかない。

サロマ湖が見えなくなって芭露という駅に停ったとき、こんどこそまちがいなく白樺だと確層できる木が並んでいたので、私は生臭いおばさんに訊ねた。やはり白樺で、このあたりではガンピとも言うとのことであった。それがきっかけになり、香りの素はホタテ貝であるとわかった。貝剥きの日傭いをしているが仕事は途切れずにあるとのことであった。 (59)

In this area, there are many temporary stations that aren’t listed in the national timetable. Shibushi, the stop after Kerochi, is one of these, and an old woman wearing red sweatpants boards here and sits right in front of me. A fishy odor wafts toward me after she gets on, but it’s an appetite-stimulating fishy, not fishy like an actual fish. I suddenly crave oysters and want to know the source of that smell. However, I can’t very well ask her, Why do you smell fishy?

Lake Saroma disappears from view, and when we stop at Barō Station, there is a patch of trees that I’m absolutely certain are white birch, so I ask the fishy woman. Indeed they are white birch, and she says they also call them ganpi in this area. Thanks to this, I also learn that the provenance of the aroma is scallops. She says she takes day work shucking scallops but that there’s never a day without work to do.

This is a lovely little passage in a book of curious little run-ins with trains and stations, many of which so far are no longer running or existing. Kerochi is a 廃駅 (haieki, abandoned station), a word that gives me another opportunity to plug Adam’s excellent exploration of abandoned train lines in Hokkaido.

Back to the passage, it also includes a very useful little phrase: とのことであった (to no koto de atta).

This will be familiar to JLPT students as とのこと seems to be an N3 grammar pattern, but I’m fairly confident that the usage is not fully explained. At the very least, the more useful forms are not introduced. This is a short phrase used to report what someone else has said. 

Reported speech is a topic that I’ve been writing about since the very beginnings of How to Japanese, over 17 years ago. How do you report what someone else has said to you? This is challenging mostly because Japanese methods are so different from English, which very explicitly names all the parties involved in the exchange of information: He said X. She said Y. He told me X. She told me Y. Obviously we can complicate this by using direct reporting or indirect reporting, which involve the presence or absence quotation marks and commas, but for the most part we always name the source of information.

In Japanese, it’s more contextual. In the blog post I linked above, I introduced そうです (sō desu) as a way to pass on information. とのこと and related patterns are another super efficient way to pass on information. Let’s take a look at how Miyawaki does it. Here are the sentences we need to look at:

私は生臭いおばさんに訊ねた。やはり白樺で、このあたりではガンピとも言うとのことであった。

The first sentence gives us all the contextual information we need to know. Miyawaki is asking the woman. In the second sentence, then, no one needs to be named. We already know. So all Miyawaki has to do is to mark what she told him with とのこと, and because he’s narrating a completed action, he uses であった. 

このあたりではガンピとも言う = reported information

とのことであった = signal that information is reported

Miyawaki is writing in 文体 (buntai, written form), so he uses the (perhaps ironically) more formal direct style (a point I addressed in a past newsletter). How do we turn this formal, written phrase into something that we can use in everyday speech or a work situation?

とのこと→ということ

Then all we have to do is slap on the distal form of the copula:

だ・である→です

And voila, we have our answer:

ということです (to iu koto desu)

I find that this is extremely useful in work situations, especially if you are working with people via Microsoft Teams or Slack. All you have to do is exactly what Miyawaki does. Use a sentence to set up the context, and then report what they said.

For example, say that you’ve been waiting on a response from a vendor, and then you finally get it. Here’s how you might report that:

外注先から返事が来ました。月曜日までに見積もりを提出するということです。

The outsource company responded. They said they’ll send the estimate by Monday.

Here's how that breaks down:

外注先から返事が来ました = establishes context

月曜日までに見積もりを提出する = reported information

ということです = signal that information is reported

Information effectively conveyed. 

ということです works in spoken situations as well, so don’t be shy with it. Start getting used to Japanese methods of communication, and get rid of all the explicit mentions of people.

いろいろ

• The podcast is live, and I go into a few specifics about the new newsletter format as well as some additional information about the difference between ということです and そうです. Murakami Fest begins on the blog on September 1, so check back as I look at more of Murakami's travels in Europe.
• Matt Alt is in the New Yorker: "How Weekly Shōnen Jump Became the World's Most Popular Manga Factory"
• This I believe:

• The Mainichi has an editorial looking at Prime Minister Ishiba’s speech commemorating the 80^th anniversary of the end of World War 2. Ishiba resumed the use of 反省 (hansei, remorse/regret) for the first time since 2013, but they still had some bones to pick and argued that he was vague. Very interesting read.
• I’ve been following Uyo on TikTok for a while and wanted to make sure that he started posting his “my slow Japanese podcast” more regularly before recommending it. It seems like he’s still focusing on short video content, but he has put out a few episodes in the past couple months. Highly recommend his content for beginner and intermediate students. He’s got really helpful language advice. This is the video I mentioned in the podcast.
• I really enjoyed this TikTok about making omuraisu, and not just for the food content. Yosef says he made his first good omuraisu on day 17 but he didn’t master it until day 84. There’s a language lesson in there.