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Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You Paperback – January 25, 2013

by Jay Rubin (Author)

4.5 237 ratings

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Making Sense of Japanese is the fruit of one foolhardy American's thirty-year struggle to learn and teach the Language of the Infinite. Previously known as Gone Fishin', this book has brought Jay Rubin more feedback than any of his literary translations or scholarly tomes, "even if," he says, "you discount the hate mail from spin-casters and the stray gill-netter."

To convey his conviction that "the Japanese language is not vague," Rubin has dared to explain how some of the most challenging Japanese grammatical forms work in terms of everyday English. Reached recently at a recuperative center in the hills north of Kyoto, Rubin declared, "I'm still pretty sure that Japanese is not vague. Or at least, it's not as vague as it used to be. Probably."

The notorious "subjectless sentence" of Japanese comes under close scrutiny in Part One. A sentence can't be a sentence without a subject, so even in cases where the subject seems to be lost or hiding, the author provides the tools to help you find it. Some attention is paid as well to the rest of the sentence, known technically to grammarians as "the rest of the sentence."

Part Two tackles a number of expressions that have baffled students of Japanese over the decades, and concludes with Rubin's patented technique of analyzing upside-down Japanese sentences right-side up, which, he claims, is "far more restful" than the traditional way, inside-out.

"The scholar," according to the great Japanese novelist Soseki Natsume, is "one who specializes in making the comprehensible incomprehensible." Despite his best scholarly efforts, Rubin seems to have done just the opposite.

Previously published in the Power Japanese series under the same title and originally as Gone Fishin' in the same series.

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Editorial Reviews

Book Description

A witty and entertaining exploration of how some of the most challenging Japanese grammatical forms work in terms of everyday English.

About the Author

JAY RUBIN is a professor of Japanese literature at Harvard University, where he has employed the pedagogical techniques contained in Making Sense of Japanese "as infrequently as possible." He has authored Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State and Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, edited Modern Japanese Writers, and translated Soseki Natsume's Sanshiro and The Miner and Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, and After the Quake (Knopf and Harvill, 2002).

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Kodansha International; Reprint edition (January 25, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 144 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 156836492X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1568364926
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.08 x 0.42 x 7.17 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #89,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #21 in Mystery Writing Reference
- #178 in Foreign Language Instruction (Books)
- #210 in Foreign Dictionaries & Thesauruses

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4.5 237 ratings

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Jay Rubin

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Jay Rubin (b. 1941) is an American academic, translator, and (as of 2015) novelist. He is best known for his translations of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. He has written about Murakami, the novelist Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), the short story writers Kunikida Doppo (1871-1908) and Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927), prewar Japanese literary censorship, Noh drama, and Japanese grammar. In May 2015 Chin Music Press published his novel THE SUN GODS, set in Seattle against the background of the incarceration of 120,000 U.S. citizens and non-citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

Rubin has a Ph.D. in Japanese literature from the University of Chicago. He taught at the University of Washington for eighteen years, and then moved to Harvard University, from which he retired in 2006. He lives near Seattle, where he continues to write and translate.

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J. FELLA

Great Addition To Your Library

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2010

Verified Purchase

Although there are already quite a few positive reviews of this book, I thought I'd add my own.

First off, I bought this book about five years ago, at which time I'd already been studying Japanese for about 15 years. I own at least 25 Japanese language books. I'm at a solid intermediate level, approaching advanced, but there still seemed to be some grammatical concepts that gave me some trouble.

And guess what, a handful of those troublesome concepts are discussed in this book. At the very top of the list, the nuances of "wa" and "ga." These two particles are invariably difficult to all beginning, and often intermediate, students. Most intermediate students can use these particles competently, but there will still be many instances where you aren't sure which to use. This book gives a fairly exhaustive explanation on this subject, and honestly, it is worth the price of the book alone.

Some of the subjects in this book can be found in other books, but some I had never seen before. I particularly enjoyed the info on the exact differences between "Shiru" and "Wakaru" and how to use each correctly. If you're like me, you've used these words many times, probably correctly (but sometimes incorrectly) and you don't know why you used one or the other. You just did it because you'd heard it used that way and knew it was correct. But sometimes you have the inclination to use the other one, but are told it is incorrect. Japanese people understand the nuances, of course, but most of them can't explain it in English (understandably so. It's complicated).

The other great section of this book is the "Explainers" section. This is something that isn't explained in many grammar books, and if it is, it is sometimes partially incorrect or simply incomplete.

It's not a perfect book, of course. The author sometimes gets a little too technical and overly detailed in some of his explanations, and I found myself at times thinking "Ok ok, cut to the chase" or "Just give me an example of what you're trying to explain." Also, some of the stories he tells seem a little unnecessary at times. And there are other things that could've been added to the book, but for the size and price of the book, it's perfect. If you want a good follow-up to this book, which covers a lot of the same detailed, often misunderstood grammatical concepts, I highly recommend "Using Japanese." Great book.

In closing I'd like to say this is very likely one of those books you may not realize you need until you buy and read it. You'll think you've been doing something correctly or that you understand something, only to discover that you really don't understand it. I say give it a try. It's cheap and I guarantee you'll learn something from it, unless you've been studying Japanese for many years and/or have lived in Japan.

8 people found this helpful

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Kristy Em

Fantastic. Highly recommend for intermed/advanced students looking to get a more thorough/native grasp on the language

Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2015

Verified Purchase

First: this book is NOT for beginners!!!!
Next: This is exactly the kind of book I was looking for; for intermediate/advanced students, explaining IN ENGLISH the intricacies and subtleties of Japanese. This book is very accurately titled, because he really does make the Japanese make sense. A lot of grammar points that I knew technically how to use, he explained more fully including the nuances, of how to use. These sorts of explanations are critical to speaking a language naturally and not just *technically* correct, but sounding a bit strange to a native. It also helps enormously in translating Japanese into English, as you see where you can take liberties and things you shouldn't do that we naturally do a lot (like the translating everything into passive bc of the "zero pronoun"). My one critique is I really REEAAALLY wish the examples had been in kana/kanji bc reading some of those huge blurbs in romaji was seriously painful. A student benefiting from this book should be at a level that they can read a full passage in Japanese (or know how to easily look up kanji by stroke order, etc). But overall, a phenomenal book for the Japanese student looking to get a more thorough grasp on the language! Highly highly recommended!!!

9 people found this helpful

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Zack Davisson

The Wa and the Ga of it

Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2005

Verified Purchase

This is a book of nuances. All those little fiddly bits of Japanese that seem impossible to grasp, the mystery of wa and ga, the disappearing subject, Shiru or Wakaru...Jay Rubin has performed a kind of magic trick and made sense of the senseless.

"Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You" is bridge, spanning the gap from Advanced Beginner to Intermediate, dealing with all the barriers at that level. Using humor and a clear insight into the language, Rubin explains the minor issues that, while seemingly tiny, are the difference between fluency and gibberish.

The only drawback is that the book is perhaps a bit too small. Rubin's explanations are clear but brief, and could soon be forgotten. Most of the important bits require re-reading, and a serious student will probably pull "Making Sense of Japanese" off the shelf quite a few times when encountering something. Beefing the tiny tome up with some exercises and quizzes would help solidify Rubin's points, making it even more useful than it already is.

As it stands, I would qualify this book as "essential" to Japanese learners at a certain level. Raw beginners probably won't get much out of it, but to Advanced Beginners/Intermediate learners, it will be exactly what they need.

23 people found this helpful

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Alex

Educative and entertaining

Reviewed in Canada on June 10, 2020

Verified Purchase

Small book with chunky content. Don't expect to sit down and plow through everything, because this book will make you stop and think about a lot of things. It's not redundant too, it's just very fun and has a good flow, some great stories and examples too. It's not just some study book, being more akin to having a long conversation with someone who has mastered information you will eventually need to know if you wanna learn Japanese.
ありがとございます。

Butler

Clear, interesting, and funny.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2021

Verified Purchase

Fantastic. Really cleared up my understanding on a few points (ga and wa/zero pronouns/passive verbs etc), whereas I’ve been confused on a number of things in my language classes. Humour combined with theory work great (really sinks in).