How To Upgrade Your Japanese Language Skills With The Japanese Passive Form

As you progress through your Japanese learning, you will likely begin to crave nuance in the way that you speak and write.

You may find it frustrating that you're stuck with basic sentence structures to convey complex ideas. Thankfully, the Japanese passive form is one of the most versatile options for you to begin adding further detail and context to your language. And it's simple to create.

As an added bonus, learning the passive form now will also better equip you to master the complexities of the highest formality, keigo/kenjougo, later on, because passive conjugation is also an important part of this way of speaking and writing!

So what you’re learning now will come in handy in many ways. Let's get to it.

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Understanding The Japanese Passive Form

In both English and Japanese, the passive form serves roughly the same function (with some minor differences).

Think of the passive form as something “being done” rather than “doing” something. So think of the difference between a cake “being eaten” (passive) and you “eating” a cake (active).

Japanese vs. English Passives

In English, a passive is a passive – whether the cake is being eaten or the dog is being bathed or the baseball is hit, passives work the same way.

In Japanese, however, there is a bit more nuance that goes into creating passives—in that some instances of the Japanese passive form don’t really exist in English.

Before we get into creating the Japanese passive form, let’s take a quick detour to examine the different types of passives you could create.

Don’t worry, they’ll all be conjugated the same way later!

Direct Japanese Passives

Direct passives are the ones that English is familiar with, and they are the ones you’re likely to recognise as well. They're called direct passives because the action is being done directly to the subject.

Let’s take a look at some examples. See if you can spot how the action directly happens to the subject being talked about.

(Sometimes, the “general population” is the one doing the acting to the person or thing, and they will be assumed and not written directly in the sentence, just like in English!)

• My cake was eaten by the dog
  • Watashi no ke-ki ga inu ni taberareta
    • 私のケーキが犬に食べられた
• Endo is known as a handsome sumo wrestler
  • Endou ha hansamu na rikishi toshite shirareteiru
    • 遠藤はハンサムな力士として知られている
• I was yelled at by my teacher
  • Watashi ha sensei ni shikarareta
    • 私は先生に叱られた

Indirect Japanese Passives

Unlike in English, Japanese has indirect passives. Take some time to practice this idea, because it doesn’t have an English equivalent!

Indirect passives in many ways function the same way that placing stress on a certain part of a sentence can in English. Remember that passives are all about focusing on what happened to someone or something.

In English, one way you can emphasise that something happened to you specifically is to place vocal stress on that part of the sentence.

• That car stopped right in front of me.

If you’re particularly put out by the fact that you were trying to get somewhere when a car inconveniently stopped you by coming to a halt directly in front of you, you might emphasise “in front of me” in English, as if to say, “In front of me. Me! Of all the people, it had to be me right at that moment.”

It’d be like saying, “I was in such a hurry, and this car was just crawling through the intersection. I was trying so hard to just get by, but then that car stopped…right in front of me.”

How This Works In Japanese

In Japanese, this tonal change to emphasize doesn’t happen. Instead, you'll have to use the Japanese passive form, even though the sentence itself doesn't appear to be passive, to emphasise an action happening to you.

You are the receiver of the action, even if the sentence is not worded that way in its English translation.

The majority of the time, an indirect passive will be about a negative thing that happens. However, on rare occasions, it can also talk about something good:

• My crush sat right next to me!

In Japanese, this would be worded as “right next to me, I was sat by my crush.” It doesn’t make much sense in English because we don't have an equivalent structure.

But this is a great time to use the Japanese passive form.

Creating The Japanese Passive Form

The passive form is relatively simple to create in Japanese, and whether you're using a direct passive or an indirect passive doesn't matter – the conjugation will be the same.

That takes some brainpower off of your plate! Learn the passive and you’ll be set, not only to add more nuance to your speech and writing but to learn keigo and kenjougo—the two most formal forms of Japanese—later. Talk about utility!

As with many forms of verb conjugation in Japanese, you'll need to know whether the verb you’re working with is an u-verb or a ru-verb.

Ru-Verb

Ru-verbs are the verbs (ending in ru) that you conjugate by removing the entire ru part and adding -masu instead. Think of some of the following as common examples:

• Taberu > Tabemasu
• Neru > Nemasu
• Miru > Mimasu

Much like you can remove the ru to add -masu, if you are creating the passive form with a ru-verb, just remove the ru once again. This time, add -rareru (or -raremasu, if you’re being more formal) instead. That’s your Japanese passive form!

U-Verb

U-verbs are conjugated not by removing their ending, but rather by altering it. Remember that not all verbs that end in ru are ru-verbs; some are u-verbs!

• Utau > Utaimasu
• Kaeru > Kaerimasu
• Oyogu > Oyogimasu

Unlike ru-verbs, you can't just drop the end of the verb and add a new one to make a passive. Instead, you must change the final sound to the “a” sound that corresponds to the final hiragana used in the word.

Do you remember learning your hiragana in sets like ka/ki/ku/ke/ko and ma/mi/mu/me/mo? The reason you learn them in “columns” is so that when you need to do conjugation, you can go back to that hiragana’s “column” and choose a different option.

In the case of a passive u-verb, you’ll need to choose the “a” option from your hiragana’s column.

• Kaeru > Kaerareru (because the “ru” column “a” sound is “ra”)
• Oyogu > Oyogareru (because the “gu” column “a” sound is “ga”)

Two Challenging U-Verbs

Two particular verb endings among u-verbs can be particularly tricky, and our previous example utau is one of them.

For words ending in hiragana u only (and not the “u” sound of another hiragana, just the actual singular vowel u), you can't just go to the vowel column and choose “a” instead. Rather, you must use wa.

• Utau > Utawareru

The other challenging conjugation is when an u-verb ends with tsu. Remember that tsu is part of the ta/chi/tsu/te/to column, so you will need to choose ta:

• Utsu > Utareru

Many new learners will choose something like “utsuwareru” or “utsureru” because they are not sure what to do with tsu.

Exceptions

As always, two of the most common verbs—suru (to do), and kuru (to come)—are exceptions to the rule. You are best off simply learning these as individual passive words rather than trying to figure out how to conjugate them each time.

• Suru > Sareru
• Kuru > Korareru

As you can see, these don't appear to follow the same rules as other passives, so you’ll need to break out your rote memorisation for these two. Suru works as a passive whether it is on its own or alongside another word.

• Benkyou suru > Benkyou sareru

Japanese Passive Form FAQ

Don't Be Passive – Keep Going

!

Now that you have tried your hand at creating passives, don’t panic if you still take a little while to put each one together. Learning Japanese—or any language—isn’t an overnight endeavor.

Remember that the best way to learn Japanese is to immerse yourself in the language as much as possible, preferably through stories! Read Japanese books. and see if you can spot the Japanese passive form.

Challenge yourself to talk about what happened to you during the day instead of reporting what you did. This way, you have the opportunity to practice passive verbs more often!

Adding the ability to create passives into your grammatical vocabulary provides an entirely new level of nuance for your speech. And because Japanese uses indirect passives as well, you will be able to express your true feelings more naturally than ever before!

Keep going, and add in passives little by little until they become a regular part of your dialogue and writing.

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.