Nuances in context- なぜそんなことをしたのか - why he did it, or what caused him to do it?


I'm trying to read a light novel for the first time and it's been confusing so
far, what with the historical present tense and everything, but I mostly
managed through until I got to this one scene.

Ana is a girl who can enter other peoples bodies, and is currently in the body
of an old man, Oniwaka. Then, he teammate Daiki suddenly uhh harrasses the old
man, so to say.

> なぜ、そんなことをしたのか、自分でも分からない。気がつけば、ダイキはアナの……鬼若の尻をさっと撫でていた。
>
> 「キャッ」鬼若が……鬼若の姿をした、アナがぴょんっと跳び上がった。「なにするんですか！？」
>
> 「ずっと気になってたんだが……そんななりをしてても、やっぱり『キャッ』て言っちゃうんだな」

So translated,

> Even Daiki himself didn't know why he did such a thing. He realised that he
> had quickly stroked Ana's...Oniwaka's buttock.
>
> "Kya!" Oniwaka...Ana, who was in Oniwaka's body, jumped up. "What are you
> doing?!"
>
> "I've always been curious but...even in a body like that, you still say
> 'kyaa', huh."

But, this is confusing me slightly. First it's said that Daiki doesn't know
why he did it, and then he makes that comment about being curious as to how
Ana would react in such a body. So then that would mean that he did it because
he was curious- but then not knowing why he did it would be a contradiction to
that.

So I looked up なぜ and saw it could be used to ask for either reason or cause,
and I thought that second option made more sense. If the sentence wasn't meant
in the 'he didn't know /why/ he did that' sense, but in the 'he didn't know
what /caused/ him to do that' sense. Since he had a clear motive for it.

I've been thinking about this paragraph for a few hours now so my head feels
too muddled to tell if I'm right or not though. Could someone explain this
apparent contradiction?




I, for one, do not find this to be a contradiction because:

It is the **_narrator_** who says 「なぜ、そんなことをしたのか、自分でも分からない。」 and it is
**_Daiki_** who says 「ずっと気になってたんだが・・」.

There may be a slight discrepancy in content between the two, but I just do
not think it serious enough to call a "contradiction".

The question (to me) is: "Should we hold the narrator responsible for these
incidents in light novels?" My own answer would be negative because if one
required such perfectly calculated and executed phrases, one could not read
light novels in the first place.

I would refrain from judging this novel by the short passage provided this
time, but spendng hours on this passage alone might not prove very productive
in the end. I admire your prudence as a foreign language learner, but as a
Japanese-speaker, I could assure you that this is not a particularly serious
problem (though I am saying this with no knowledge of the larger context).




I, for one, do not find this to be a contradiction because:

It is the **_narrator_** who says 「なぜ、そんなことをしたのか、自分でも分からない。」 and it is
**_Daiki_** who says 「ずっと気になってたんだが・・」.

There may be a slight discrepancy in content between the two, but I just do
not think it serious enough to call a "contradiction".

The question (to me) is: "Should we hold the narrator responsible for these
incidents in light novels?" My own answer would be negative because if one
required such perfectly calculated and executed phrases, one could not read
light novels in the first place.

I would refrain from judging this novel by the short passage provided this
time, but spendng hours on this passage alone might not prove very productive
in the end. I admire your prudence as a foreign language learner, but as a
Japanese-speaker, I could assure you that this is not a particularly serious
problem (though I am saying this with no knowledge of the larger context).

