に as an indirect complement


From this question

[Why is に used in
若者が元気に溢れている?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/29460/why-
is-%E3%81%AB-used-
in-%E8%8B%A5%E8%80%85%E3%81%8C%E5%85%83%E6%B0%97%E3%81%AB%E6%BA%A2%E3%82%8C%E3%81%A6%E3%81%84%E3%82%8B)

I did few hours ago another one, a bigger one arose.

> マフィアは隠れ蓑に合法的な事業を展開している

I know に can be used as an indirect complement but I would have used として since
隠れ蓑に is not the recipient of an action.

Also Can someone explain how is に used as an indirect complement?




You are correct that you can use `として` there. This kind of `〜に` basically
means として. I'm not sure you can call it a complement though, because according
to the definitions I just looked up, it seems more like an adjunct. But
terminology is not my forté, so I'll just give some examples of the same kind
of usage.

  * (私は)息抜き **に** 本を読む → I 本を読む as a 息抜き
  * (私は)暇つぶし **に** テレビを見る → I テレビを見る as a 暇つぶし
  * (私は)東京を拠点 **に** 活動する → I 活動する with [ 東京 as the 拠点 ]
  * (私たちは)結婚を前提 **に** 付き合う → We 付き合う with [ 結婚 as a 前提 ]

The `に` in the above examples can all be replaced with `として`.

For many of the words that are often used adverbially like 試しに (試しに買った) or 戯れに
(戯れに描いた), you can't replace the `に` with `として` because those are set phrases.
But the meaning of the `に` is basically the same as として.

