recently I stumbled upon a sentence in Yukio Mishima's 憂国{ゆうこく} - "Patriotism". It is BTW part Japanese/English parallel text stories, so I basically know what it intends to say but I simply can't wrap my mind around the concepts necessary to parse the sentence. (The problem might be similar as discussed in here). Ok, here it goes:


I believe the most problematic part is this one:

My closest translation (with help from the book) arrives at: even (only just) thinking about the frequent joys of the flesh she started throbbing." But I have no idea what to do with the を. In my eyes this sentence would make more sense if turned around: 日夜の肉の悦びを思うだにときめいて来る. So:

Am I right here?

Maybe the particle makes the connection to the next sentence?

So the word order must be as it is?

And the fact that no verb is used (or requied) in the following sentence (快楽などという名で呼んだことは一度もなかった) is because the sentence itself acts as the verb - kind of?
If so, why the comma between those 2 sentences?

Thanks a lot!


This を is the object maker of 呼んだ. 思うだにときめいて来る日夜の肉の悦び is a noun phrase. I translated it as "Reiko had never called the bodily joys of day and night that she started throbbing only by thinking about, a word "pleasure(快楽)".

I am not sure of my translation, so I add another explanation. If 思うだにときめいて来る日夜の肉の悦び is A and 快楽などという名 is B, it would be translated as "Reiko had never called A B".

  • Thanks a lot! But what about the comma? Is it necessary for the proper understanding?
    – Quit007
    Aug 16 '18 at 6:53
  • 1
    It would be for the reason that readers can be easy to understand. The author might think that the sentence without the comma is too long as a sentence. Aug 16 '18 at 7:37
  • I see, thank you! I was confused because in european languages commas are often used to Interject a sentence - similar to text in parenthesis.
    – Quit007
    Aug 18 '18 at 15:35

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