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Am I Missing Something Here?

Mike Cash

骨も命も皆此の土地に埋めよう
15 Mar 2002
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From 父の死 by 久米正雄

「お父さんと一緒なら怖くはない。」

さう思ひ乍ら私は健気にも、それを理知で抑へようとかかつた。併し乍ら其次に起つた小さな推理は、父は大人だから此儘死なないかも知れぬと云う事で私を脅かした。そして自分一人が取残される。

I understand what's happening and I know it is a sick and terrified eight year old child speaking, but I can't follow how his father NOT dying would leave him alone. So the one who might not die is obviously the child, but in that case what does his father being an adult have to do with it?
 
Wow 歴史的假名遣ひ. My head hurts. Anyway I'm guessing here but maybe the reader doesn't really believe in the logic/inference that just because dad is an adult he won't die like this which is why it is threatening to burst his bubble of fantasy? Which means he will be left alone if that logic is false.

推理が私を脅かす is what I got out of that mangle.

I assume in the book it is 健氣 and 取殘される.

Someone else can have a go. Toritoribe?
 
旧仮名遣い isn't hard to get used to reading. If you've got a fair bit of experience reading modern stuff it will only slow you down a bit at first, then you quickly learn to breeze through it. The pre-war kanji take a little more getting used to, but if you can already read modern texts without stopping to look up kanji it isn't a big deal. You quickly learn to spot what they are from context and from visual clues (the simplified reformed character can often be spotted in the more complex unrefined kanji).

I'm guessing there is an implied 私が after だから, but the logic escapes me. However, this is a scared sh!tless eight year old child convinced he is moments from death, so rational thought may be too much to expect.

I reproduced the text exactly as it appears, yes. This was written in 1916.
 
Well one good thing is that they can fix up 屍体 洗滌 編輯 智慧 聯合 and stop replacing them with nonsense characters. :)

Toritoribe is prob the only one here that will give you a confident answer so wait for him to show up eventually.
 
ご指名なので(笑 (Although I believe I'm not the only one.;-))

Well, my interpretation, other than just a typo or the author's confusion, is that the boy was scared to be left in this situation alone; not "this world" but "being sick, between death and live".
 
ご指名なので(笑 (Although I believe I'm not the only one.;-))

Well, my interpretation, other than just a typo or the author's confusion, is that the boy was scared to be left in this situation alone; not "this world" but "being sick, between death and live".

Thanks very much. It looks as though I have been guilty of the "not enough context" sin.

Father and son have both come home early with 食当たり from eel eaten the previous evening and have gone to bed early. I'll include a few screenshots which show the boy's delirium/imagination and growing terror and what seems to be a genuine fear of impending death:

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1409041705.948944.jpg

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ImageUploadedByTapatalk1409041740.128378.jpg

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1409041753.611516.jpg

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1409041766.934903.jpg

Forgive the seeming laziness of screenshots, but I am at work and just simply don't have the time to type all that.
 
If he imagined that they died together and only father rose from the dead, 冥土に取残される is valid. In other words, your interpretation is wrong since he thought 父は大人だから此儘死なないかも知れぬ。そして自分一人が取残される。
 
I'm probably lacking powers of observation again but I'm gonna ask anyway, if his father wouldnt just die like that, how would the boy be left alone anywhere? and how would the thought of such a thing be a threatening one to the boy?
 
Father and son have both come home early with 食当たり from eel eaten the previous evening and have gone to bed early. I'll include a few screenshots which show the boy's delirium/imagination and growing terror and what seems to be a genuine fear of impending death:
the boy was scared to be left in this situation alone; not "this world" but "being sick, between death and live".
 

Sorry Tori, this is probably something only a flask of ritalin would solve , my attention span is sinking... -.-

thank you
 
Hmm, now I'm wondering if I'm the one missing something, because looking at the full context this seems to make perfect sense.

Excerpting a couple of relevant sentences starting from the beginning of the passage:

(p1-2)私はふと此儘死ぬのではないかと思った向こうの書斎に寝てゐる父と一緒に、この明るい世界から永久に離れて、その脂色の人の居る場所へ。何かに導かれて行ってしまう了ふのでは無いかと思った。
(p3)其時ふと細かい戦慄が足の方から込み上げて来た。

Up to this point, the child is scared to death that both he and his father are going to die.

(p3)「お父さんと一緒なら怖くはない。」さう思ひ乍ら私は健気にも、それを理知で抑へようとかかつた。

Here, the child tries to calm his fears with the thought that as long as both he and his father pass from this world together, maybe death won't be so scary.

併し乍ら其次に起つた小さな推理は、父は大人だから此儘死なないかも知れぬと云う事で私を脅かした。そして自分一人が取残される。

Then in the next moment a frightening thought occurs to him: maybe his father, being a big strong adult, will survive. Then, the child will die alone. (brief edit for clarity: i.e. be left alone in the afterlife because his father never died and joined him there)

I'm also wondering if I'm missing something in the sense that this thread seems to have originated half a year ago. If everyone has already figured this out and I'm just talking nonsense to myself, please forgive me. :)
 
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I think the verb 取残される is the key, as I wrote in my previous post. If that were 行って了ふ, the destination is the afterworld. (As a result, the boy would go to the afterworld after he is left (取残される) alone in the current situation, and he is scared by that idea, of course.)
 
Thanks, toritoribe-san. I think it all finally clicked for me too.

I was trying to force an interpretation of 「そうすると(あの世で)一人になってしまう」 on the sentence in question, when in fact, 「そうすると(あの世で)一人になってしまう」 is a (not explicitly stated) mental conclusion he draws from realizing that his father may not die, thus leaving him alone in his current pain and suffering (自分一人が取残される).

I feel strangely compelled to seek out the full story and read it in its entirety.
 
It's a rather short story and is available from Aozora Bunko for free.

Spoiler alert: if you like happy endings, you won't find many in literature from this era.
 
I'm a native speaker of Japanese and 父は後から来ると言っていたが結局来なかったので私だけが島に取り残された is perfecly OK.
The verb 取り残す doesn't necessarily imply that 二人はその場所にいた
 
I'm a native speaker of Japanese and 父は後から来ると言っていたが結局来なかったので私だけが島に取り残された is perfecly OK.
The verb 取り残す doesn't necessarily imply that 二人はその場所にいた

Thank you very much. That is the logical conclusion I should have inferred in the first place. As the author is (was) also not only a native speaker but also a noted literary figure I had no doubts about his usage being correct or not.

I'm still just an intermediate learner and I do get stuck on things sometimes.

Thanks to jt for pointing out that one would expect an adult to be hardier than a child on something like this. And thanks all around to everyone who has taken the time to help me out with this.
 
I'm a native speaker of Japanese and 父は後から来ると言っていたが結局来なかったので私だけが島に取り残された is perfecly OK.
The verb 取り残す doesn't necessarily imply that 二人はその場所にいた
In that example, the speaker has been already in the island and is left there, whereas in the novel the boy is not in the afterworld/冥土 yet. This seems to be a huge difference to me.

I, too, am a native Japanese speaker, by the way.
 
My initial impression was as Hoge-san describes─that the child hasn't died yet, but is envisioning a situation in which he is stranded alone in the afterlife because his father survived and never came to him.
In that example, the speaker has been already in the island and is left there, whereas in the novel the boy is not in the afterworld/冥土 yet. This seems to be a huge difference to me.
I'm not certain this changes anything, but Hoge-san's example was 父は後から来ると言っていたが結局来なかったので私だけが島に取り残された, while the passage from the novel is そして自分一人が取残される

Let's suppose the child is on a boat that is about to arrive at the island from the example (i.e. he's not quite there yet, but can see the shore approaching). In that situation, would the following be acceptable?

父は後から来ると言っていたが、もしかして来ないかもしれない。そうなると、私だけがこの島に取り残される/取り残されてしまう

Apologies if I'm beating a dead horse here. Needless to say, I am (like Mike) just an intermediate learner (as I will remain until the day I shuffle off to the underworld) trying achieve the best understanding of the language that I can.
 
Let's suppose the child is on a boat that is about to arrive at the island from the example (i.e. he's not quite there yet, but can see the shore approaching). In that situation, would the following be acceptable?

父は後から来ると言っていたが、もしかして来ないかもしれない。そうなると、私だけがこの島に取り残される/取り残されてしまう

It is (to me). Yes, this is a better example than my original one. Thank you for clarifying the point.
 
I believe the basic idea of 取り残される is; the subject is at somewhere with someone else, they (= someone else) go away from there, and he/she(= the subject) is left there alone.

When the boy felt terror, he thought この明るい世界から永久に離れて、その脂色(やにいろ)の人の居る所へ、何かに導かれて行つて了ふのでは無いかと思つた, i.e., he thought he was not in the afterworld yet. His terror is from the current situation 何かゞ息を潜めて、すべての暗い所に俺を見張つてゐる (therefore 其時ふと細かい戦慄が足の方から込み上げて来た). He told himself お父さんと一緒なら怖くはない even in this situation, but if his father 此儘死なないかも知れぬ, 自分一人が取残される. He was frightened the idea that he would be left alone in this terrible situation, not thinking about his death or after he died. It seems to me さうすると其先はどうなるであらう more likely refers to it; he might die alone, he might go to the afterworld alone. This is my interpretation, anyway.
 
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