Definition:
The passive form (受身形, ukemi-kei) in Japanese expresses that the grammatical subject is the recipient of an action performed by another agent. Japanese has two types of passive: the direct passive (the subject is directly acted upon) and the indirect passive (the subject is adversely affected by an action performed on something else). The indirect passive is a distinctive feature of Japanese with no direct English equivalent.
Forming the Passive
Group 2 verbs (Ichidan/ru-verbs): Replace -る with -られる
- 食べる (taberu) → 食べられる (taberareru — be eaten)
- 見る (miru) → 見られる (mirareru — be seen/watched)
Group 1 verbs (Godan/u-verbs): Change -u to -a, then add -れる
- 書く (kaku) → 書かれる (kakareru — be written)
- 飲む (nomu) → 飲まれる (nomareru — be drunk)
- 呼ぶ (yobu) → 呼ばれる (yobareru — be called)
- 話す (hanasu) → 話される (hanasareru — be spoken about)
Group 3 (irregular):
- する (suru) → される (sareru — be done to)
- 来る (kuru) → 来られる (korareru — have come / be come upon)
Types of Passive
Direct Passive (直接受身):
The subject is directly acted upon by the agent.
> 田中さんは先生に褒められた。
> Tanaka-san was praised by the teacher.
Structure: Subject は + Agent に + Passive verb
(The agent — who performed the action — is marked by に)
This corresponds closely to English passive (“The book was written by the professor” ˜ 本は教授に書かれた).
Indirect Passive (間接受身) — adversative passive:
The subject is negatively affected by an action that is performed on something else (not directly on the subject). The subject did not receive the action directly — but suffered as a result.
> 雨に降られた。
> I was rained on. (Lit: “I was fallen upon [adversely] by the rain”)
> 友達に死なれた。
> I suffered the loss of my friend dying. (Lit: “I was [adversely] ‘died’ by my friend”)
> 隣の人に席を取られた。
> The seat next to me was taken (by the person next to me, to my inconvenience).
The indirect passive is a distinctively Japanese construction with no clean English parallel. It regularly encodes suffering, inconvenience, or unwanted experience — even when the action is morally neutral (rain falling), the passive construction frames it as adversative from the speaker’s perspective.
Passive in Formal/Written Japanese
In formal written Japanese (news, academic texts, official documents), the passive voice is used for objectivity and impersonality — similar to English passive in academic writing:
> この研究では以下のような結果が得られた。
> In this study, the following results were obtained.
This usage does not carry adversative nuance; it is a register marker for formal discourse.
Passive vs. Potential Confusion
For Group 2 verbs, the passive -られる is identical in form to the potential form -られる:
- 食べられる — passive: “is/was eaten” | potential: “can eat”
Context disambiguates: passive requires an agent phrase (? by someone) or a passivized object; potential does not.
Common Misconceptions
“The Japanese passive works like the English passive.”
English passive simply reframes the sentence’s agent and patient. Japanese passive does this too (direct passive), but also has the indirect/adversative passive — a construction with no English equivalent — where the subject experiences another person’s action as an inconvenience: 雨に降られた (I was rained on) expresses suffering caused by rain, not that rain was somehow done to you in the English sense.
“The adversative passive is just emphasis or stylistic choice.”
The indirect passive is grammatically and semantically distinct, not merely a more emphatic version of the active sentence. It structurally adds the experiencer as a grammatical subject and consistently encodes that the action was unwanted, unexpected, or inconvenient. Omitting the adversative nuance produces a fundamentally different meaning.
“Group 2 (ichidan) passive and potential forms are interchangeable.”
For ichidan verbs, passive (食べられる, taberareru) and potential forms share the same surface form — but they express entirely different meanings. Context disambiguates: 魚に食べられた (was eaten by the fish) vs. 全部食べられる (can eat all of it). Confusing the two is a frequent error at the N4-N3 level.
“Passive is rare in Japanese and mainly appears in formal writing.”
Passive constructions — especially the adversative passive — appear constantly in everyday spoken Japanese. Expressions like 彼女に泣かれた (she cried on me / I was affected by her crying) are colloquial and frequent. Learners who treat passive as an advanced or formal-only structure miss a core feature of Japanese emotional expression.
Practical Application
For Japanese learners:
- The direct passive (N4) is acquired before the indirect/adversative passive (N3); focus on the direct form first with the structure: Subject は + Agent に + Passive verb
- When you learn the indirect passive, pay attention to how it expresses emotional stance — it colors content with suffering, annoyance, or victimhood
- Practice recognition of passive in reading: formal texts heavily use passive; understanding why a sentence uses passive vs. active tells you about agency and responsibility framing
- Sakubo
Related Terms
See Also
Research
- Jacobsen, W. M. (1992). The Transitive Structure of Events in Japanese. Kuroshio Publishers. [Summary: Linguistic analysis of Japanese event structures — includes detailed treatment of passive constructions with attention to the semantic differences between direct and indirect passive and their relationship to the transitive/intransitive alternation system.]
- Shibatani, M. (1985). Passives and related constructions: A prototype analysis. Language, 61(4), 821–848. [Summary: Cross-linguistic analysis of passive constructions, including Japanese — establishes a prototype theory of passivization and explains why the Japanese indirect (adversative) passive is typologically unusual and pragmatically distinctive compared to European passive constructions.]