Nono-chan is a four-panel comic by Hisaichi Ishii(1), carried in the morning edition of the Asahi Shinbun newspaper. However, although it is a four-panel comic, it is not necessarily always composed of four panels. For example, comic 4081 (October 4, 2008) contained five panels. In the space that would normally contain the third panel, were drawn two narrow panels (the third and fourth panels), while a fifth panel was drawn in the space that would normally contain the fourth panel. Let’s trace the story of this comic.

The setting is inside the house. In the first panel, the father appears to have just gotten up and is in his pajamas; looking around, he says to himself, “I guess everyone went out.” There’s a piece of paper on a desk by his side.

Second panel. The piece of paper is a note, with a sentence written in the “-ta” (past tense) form: “Reezooko ni chaahan ga arimashita” (There was some fried rice in the refrigerator.). There are kana (レイゾウコ) written above the kanji 冷蔵庫 (reezooko, refrigerator); these are not so much a product of consideration by the note’s author (the mother), as they are of the artist’s concern for his wide range of readers. (Kana readings appear above some of the other kanji in the comic, but I won’t mention it again.)

Third panel. Seeing the note is in the “ta” form, the father grumbles, “Past tense? So who ate it?”

Fourth panel. Opening the refrigerator, he sees there is indeed some fried rice there. “Huh. There is some after all,” he says.

Fifth panel. Staring at the plate of fried rice in his hand and furrowing his eyebrows, the father says “I wonder exactly how old this is.” In the margin, the words, “there was some fried rice in the refrigerator” appear again, along with a small picture of the mother peeping into the refrigerator and exclaiming “Wao!” (Oh!) in surprise. That is the end of the comic.

According to Dr. Hiroaki Kato, who sent me this comic knowing of my research on the syllable “ta” (mentioned in an earlier column(2)), whether or not readers can understand the joke is influenced by whether or not they regularly read Nono-chan. To be sure, when I asked around, some people did not understand this comic at all; in other words, they could not understand the “ta” form sentence “Reezooko ni chaahan ga arimashita.” These were invariably people who were not familiar with the character of the mother in Nono-chan.

The “ta” in this note, “Reezooko ni chaahan ga arimashita,” is the same “ta” used by the people returning from their hiking trip: “Kyoo △△ yama ni ittara, saru ga ita” (Today, we went to Mount So-and-so, and there was a monkey there!)

The speaker can utter this sentence, “Kyoo △△yama ni ittara, saru ga ita,” in the belief that at the very moment he’s speaking, the monkey is still there on Mount So-and-so. It is not the fact that “there is a monkey on Mount So-and-so” that allows the speaker to use the “ta” form past tense, but rather her own past experience of “having gone and explored (by hiking) the conditions of Mount So-and-so, and discovering a monkey.”

The mother in Nono-chan is a slovenly, lazy individual, so the refrigerator that is under her charge is extremely disorganized. To this mother the refrigerator is, like Mount So-and-so, a mysterious territory whose contents are unknown. Like the people exploring Mount So-and-so (by hiking), the mother explored her refrigerator. As a result, since her experience of finding some fried rice in the fridge was already in the past at the time she wrote the note, her use of the “ta” form in the phrase “Reezouko ni chaahan arimashita” is justified.

Normally, we do not need to explore our own refrigerators. Or do we? I’m not sure I can speak for my refrigerator. Anyway, dwindling confidence in my own fridge notwithstanding, the important thing here is that, even if I did explore my refrigerator, and then shared the results of this experience with someone in a note, I would normally write it in the form of general knowledge —“There’s some fried rice in the refrigerator”— and not as an exploratory experience.

However, because this mother is a slovenly, lazy individual, she didn’t bother with this detail, and just expressed her exploratory experience, without modification, in the note (second panel). Confused by this, the father says “Past tense? So who ate it?” (third panel), but upon opening the refrigerator and learning that there is indeed fried rice there (fourth panel) it finally dawns on him that this note was not an expression of knowledge of the existence of the fried rice in the refrigerator, but rather a narrative of the mother’s exploration of the refrigerator (fifth panel); that is the point of this comic.

So when the people returning from their hiking trip use “ta” —“Kyoo △△ yama ni ittara, saru ga ita”— it is not as if there is actually a monkey in front of them now; on this point it is a different kind of “ta” from the discovery “ta” addressed in my earlier column. The “ta” used in the mother’s note —“Reezooko ni chaahan ga arimashita”— is similar. However correctly interpreting this comic (looking at the fifth panel, and concluding that “the mother explored her refrigerator, and then wrote a note about her unmodified experience in narrative form”) is inextricably dependent upon one’s assigning the mother the character of a “slovenly, lazy individual.” The naturalness of this “ta” being linked with character is not exclusive to the discovery “ta.”

I’d like to talk about this, along with the topics I discussed previously, in more detail later. I’ll be able to do so at the Kobe University symposium “Role Language, Character, and Speech,” which will be held on March 28 and 29 (Sat. & Sun.). Lectures and presentations on research are scheduled, so I hope that all my readers will attend. Admission is free, and you can inquire by email as per the website’s directions.(3)

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