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Lesson 86: 次第

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Today we're going to talk about one of those words that has a huge list of apparently unconnected meanings, if you take the English-Japanese dictionary seriously, which makes it feel very difficult.

But as is usual in these cases, the real problem is simply trying to fit the square peg of English definition into the round hole of Japanese.

So, if we take a look at the word we'll be able to understand what it really means and how it really works.

The word is "shidai".

According to the dictionary, it can mean "depending on", "as soon as", "immediately upon", "in accordance with", "order", "program", "precedence", "circumstances", "course of events".

And then we have what the conventional textbooks like to call a "grammar point": "shidai-ni", which means "gradually" in the sense of gradually progress into a state.

So, how do we make sense of all this?

Well, let's start by looking at "shidai".

"Shidai" is made up of two kanji and it's a noun.

And you ought to know that as soon as I say it's made up of two kanji and nothing else, we know that it's a noun. That's all it can be.

And the two kanji are: this first one, which is the kanji we use in "tsugi" (next), and that's what it means, "next".

And this one, "dai", which is the Japanese ordinal.

Now, what's an ordinal?

In English, an ordinal is the -st in "first", the -nd in "second", the -rd in "third", the -th in "fourth" etc.

In Japanese, fortunately, we only have one ordinal for every number and it's "dai", and we put it before the number, not afterwards.

So if we want to talk about the third episode of an anime we say "daisan wa"; so the "dai" is the -rd, the "san" is the three, and "wa" is the counter for stories or episodes.

So, we have the "tsugi" kanji, the "next" kanji, whose regular on-reading is "shi", and we have "dai", meaning "ordinal / sequence / number in sequence".

So what it means is "next thing in sequence / next thing in order".

And one more thing we need to know about this word is that it generally works by attaching to another noun.

And this gives us a kind of compound.

So if we attach "tokei" to "ude", "ude" is telling us about the "tokei".

"Udedokei" is an "arm-clock" (a wristwatch).

If we attach "suna" to "tokei" then we have a "sand-clock" (an hourglass).

And similarly we form these noun-compounds with "shidai" and whatever it's attached to.

And the simplest use of this is where it replaces the English expression "as soon as" or "immediately upon".

So, if we say, "wakari-shidai odenwa shimasu", we're saying, "As soon as it becomes known...("wakaru", become known; literally, do known, do understandable)...

As soon as it becomes understandable, I'll call you."

What you see that we have here the i-stem of "wakaru" (do understandable), which is "wakari", and we're creating a compound noun, which means "next thing in sequence after doing understandable is that I'll call you / As soon as it become understandable, as soon as we know the situation, I'll call you."

"Shokuji-no youi-ga deki-shidai taberu."

So, although here we actually have a logical clause:

"Shokuji-no youi-ga dekiru" (preparations for the meal are completed; literally, come out), we actually have the stem of "dekiru" here, which is "deki", and that's attached to "shidai".

So, "the next thing in sequence after the preparation's been completed is eat / As soon as the preparations for the meal are finished, we'll eat".

And from this logic we then get what seems to be a completely different idea in English, which is "depending upon".

So we might say, "sore-wa tenki-shidai da".

In English we'd say "that depends on the weather".

But in Japanese what we're saying is "that follows directly from the weather".

And, as you see, it's a different way of putting it, but it means fundamentally the same thing.

"Kare-no kotae-wa kibun-shidai da." Now, that means "his answer follows directly from his mood".

In other words, his answer depends on what mood he's in.

And a useful phrase to know here is "te-atari-shidai".

"Te-atari" is "te" (hand) and "atari" (touch or contact).

"Te-atari-shidai" means "whatever one can lay one's hands on / whatever comes to hand".

So, "te-atari-shidai hon-wo yomu" (I read whatever book comes to hand).

Reading a book follows directly from hand-touch of a book, literally.

"Te-atari-shidai" can be used in all kinds of constructions: I eat whatever comes to hand; I read whatever comes to hand; I throw whatever comes to hand at the neighbors.

And, as you see, it's the noun-form of this verb (touch) "ataru", which is "atari", which attaches to "shidai".

Another useful trick is that we can attach "shidai" directly to a person.

So if we say "anata-shidai desu", we're essentially saying "it's up to you / it follows directly from you".

Now, this wouldn't be expressed in English as "depends on", and in fact if we wanted to say "it all depends on you" in Japanese, we'd have to use a different kind of construction altogether.

Within the Japanese meaning spectrum, what "anata-shidai da" means is "it follows directly from you": It's up to you, it's not up to anyone else, it doesn't follow from me, it doesn't follow from anybody else, it follows directly from you, it's up to you.

The important thing to understand here is that while the English meaning spectrum and the Japanese meaning spectrum differ, in Japanese terms we're dealing with the same fundamental idea all the time.

It's not a random selection of ideas, the way it looks as if it is when you see it in an English-Japanese dictionary.

From here we get meanings like "according to": "nedan-wa shina-shidai de chigau", which literally means "the price differs directly following the goods".

Now, if the goods are the same, which they usually are in this kind of a construction, then it would mean the quality of the goods, just as "tenki-shidai" means the quality of the weather, the type of weather, and "kibun-shidai" means the quality of somebody's mood, the type of mood.

So, "shina-shidai" means the type of goods, the quality of goods.

Now, we can still use the "depending" translation here and not the "according to" translation.

We could say, "The price depends on the quality of the goods".

However, if we use an expression like "mibun-shidai-ni kurasu", we're saying "live according to one's station in life, according to one's means".

We can't use "depend" here in English, but as you see as far as Japanese goes it's exactly the same idea.

"Mibun" isn't quite translatable, but it means one's position in life, one's status, and it can, particularly in modern times, mean how much money one has.

Now, in some cases, and this is where it becomes a little more extended, "shidai" (next in sequence) can represent the whole sequence.

So in these cases it can mean things like a process, a set of circumstances, a course of events.

So one might say, "sore-wa konna shidai datta" (it was this kind of situation, it was this kind of a sequence of events).

Now, we also have what the textbooks would call the "grammar point", "shidai-ni".

This is simply the standard practice of taking a noun ("shidai" is a noun) and using it adverbially to describe a verb.

And doing something "shidai-ni", in a "shidai" manner, is as a sequence of steps or gradually.

So, "Cheshaa neko-wa shidai-ni kieta" (The Cheshire Cat disappeared gradually).

Or "yoru-wa shidai-ni nagaku naru" (the nights are growing longer, day by day, step by step).

And this always implies a process taking place over time either in definite stages or not, but taking place over time, bit by bit.

And because this is put forward as a "grammar point", it can be a bit confusing.

What we need to notice is that not every use of "shidai" that is followed by -ni corresponds to this so-called grammar point.

The real issue here, which doesn't tend to get explained, is that when "shidai" is not modified by another noun and it's on its own acting as an independent adverb, that's when it has this meaning.

So, in the example we saw earlier, "mibun-shidai-ni kurasu", that isn't an example of this. It is being used adverbially, but what's modifying "kurasu" is not "shidai" on its own but the compound "mibun-shidai".

So these are the fundamental uses of "shidai".

They seem very different if you look at them through English glasses, but if you look at them as they are, I think we can see that "shidai" works pretty much the same way all the time.