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I came across this sentence and I can't figure out what the purpose of に is.
The full sentence in context is:

> 天照大神【あまてらすおおかみ】 **に**
> は須佐之男命【すさのおのみこと】という弟の神様がいたのですが、須佐之男【すさのお】はとても乱暴【らんぼう】で悪いことばかりするので、人々はとても困っていました。

I factored out irrelevant clauses from the sentence so it boils down to:

> 天照大神【あまてらすおおかみ】 **に** は須佐之男命【すさのおのみこと】という弟の神様がいた。

In my experience, に combined with the existence verb いる marks the location in
which someone exists or is:

> 友達は家にいる。My friend is at home.

But it doesn't make sense to me that the god 須佐之男命【すさのおのみこと】 exists _in_
天照大神【あまてらすおおかみ】, but I rather think that the meaning is simply that
須佐之男命【すさのおのみこと】 has a brother 天照大神【あまてらすおおかみ】:

> 天照大神【あまてらすおおかみ】 **に** は須佐之男命【すさのおのみこと】という弟の神様がいた。Within the Great God
> Amaterasu, there was [her] younger brother Susanoonomikoto (it feels wrong
> to me).

I would rather say the same sentence _without_ に

> 天照大神【あまてらすおおかみ】は須佐之男命【すさのおのみこと】という弟の神様がいた。As for the Great God Amaterasu,
> there was [her] younger brother Susanoonomikoto.

What is the function of this に?

Thank you in advance.
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2020-07-02T07:10:51.060
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particle-に particle-は
What function does に serve in the following sentence?
Following the definition of the
[dictionary](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E3%81%AB%E3%81%AF/):

> **１** 「に」の付いた部分を強める意を表す。「僕にはわかっている」「ここにはない」「わざわざ出向くには当たらない」

In other words, you can treat 〜には as 〜は except that whatever comes before the
particle is emphasized. This is different from 〜に that serves as a "location"
particle.

The answer is discussed in more detail
[here](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/1096/29327)
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In this sentence, に is acting as a **subject marker** and は is adding
contrast. [This answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/11021/32952)
explains it pretty well, so please check its section "Contrasted (XにはY)" for
more detail.
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2020-07-02T18:37:08.393
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Disclaimer: I don't think this answer will be helpful for a lot of people, but
I wanted to share my perspective on this topic anyways.

I think it's probably not that effective to try to explain Japanese using
western grammar concepts, but nonetheless, に is often associated with the
dative case (because it's used for the recipient of a gift, for example). And
as a former student of Latin, I just can't help but see the similarities
between に + ある / いる and the concept of the possessive dative:

私には (dative) 友達が (nominative) いる。

Mihi (dative) socii (nominative) sunt.

*Friends (nominative) are us (dative).

There are also surely other languages out there that do this that I am not
aware of. But as for English, it doesn't really work of course, since it lost
the distinction between the dative and accusative case, and that's precisely
why I said that this probably won't help much. But if I had to describe it, it
feels like a sentence "My friends are there for me" where the "for" is really
weak. And precisely because the "for" is really weak, you wouldn't use ため when
translating it into Japanese, but a simple に or には.

So all in all, from my standpoint and knowing the languages that I do, this に
+ ある / いる feels quite natural, but I lack the means to properly convey it in
English. I just wanted to share my view on this stuff on the off chance that
it might click with someone.
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answer