Would that it might be
Nearly a thousand years ago, Saigyo (西行) penned this waka:
願わくは
花の下にて
春死なん
その如月の
望月の頃
Reading:
Negawaku ha
Hana no shita nite,
haru shinan
sono kisaragi no
mochizuki no koro.
My translation:
Would that it might be
Beneath a tree aflower
In spring that I die
In that second lunar month
On the night of its full moon.
This poem has a special meaning to me. My best friend left it behind when he took his own life.
No, we’re not going to try to criticize other people’s translation—that would be too easy. Instead, let’s take a look at the very first word, 願わくは/negawaku-ha, which could also be 願わくば/negawaku-ba. This of course comes from the word 願う/negau, which means to hope for something or request it. negawakuba means something like ”if I get my wish”, “if it’s at all possible”, “what I really would like”, or, as I have translated it above, “would that it might be”. In Japanese, it could be glossed as 願うところ, or 願うこと (my wish being, what I wish for). But where did that く/ku come from, and what meaning does it convey?
Actually the く/ku is an archaic Japanese construct meaning exactly “it being”, in other words, ところ or こと, place or thing. This grammatical form from back in the Heian period has long since disappeared, but this particular word has survived.
There are several other of these words you probably use every day. The most common one is almost certainly 恐らく (osoraku, probably). But what does something probably going to take place have to do with being afraid, which is what 恐れる/osoreru means? It’s a generalization of fear to anything happening in the future, giving osoraku the meaning “my expectation being”.
Then of course there is いわく (iwaku, so-called), deriving from いう/say, giving it the meaning “the expression being”. And you may know 思惑 (omowaku), meaning literally “the thinking being”, or in other words expectation or forecast. The 惑 here has just been borrowed for its reading; you could also write this 思わく.
This pattern has a name! It’s ku-go-hō, written ク語法: the “ku lexical principle”.
There is one more kugohō word possibly worth adding to your vocabulary: すべからく/subekaraku, which can be written as 須く. This derives from the べき and べし meaning “should”, resulting it the meaning “should definitely, without exception”. A recent survey of Japanese college kids showed that less than half of them knew this, however; the rest thought it had do to with “all” of something, presumably because the sube reminded them of すべて/subete/all So now you know something about Japanese that many high school kids don’t.
すべからくという単語をすべからく覚えたほうがいい。
You should definitely learn the word “definitely”.