In the middle of the Famicom game Bucky O'Hare, a cutscene starts with this
text:

こうして ４人を きゅうしゅつした バッキーであったが・・・じつは それは バッキー オヘアを とらえる ために トードぐんが しくんだ わなだったのだ！！

The meaning of the sentence is obvious -- "Thus Bucky rescued the four, but
[etc., etc.]" -- but I can't quite grasp this use of であった. I realize it's from
である, but its role here doesn't seem to be a simple "was". What's going on
here?
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2011-10-27T06:59:04.803
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2012-01-07T05:36:54.617
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question
copula
Strange use of であった in narrative
"It was Bucky that...", by comparison with 救出{きゅうしゅつ}した **のは** バッキーであった, is an
easy trap to fall into, but I don't think it's right.

The sentence `こうしてバッキーは４人を救出した` describes events from an objective global
perspective, but the wording in the sentence in the question takes a small
amount of time to reflect on Bucky himself as he existed at that point in time
-- what he's thinking, feeling, etc.

であった asserts that Bucky was for a brief moment "Bucky, who in this manner had
(just) saved the four". We briefly reflect on what this change feels like /
means for him.

I'm finding this very hard to put into English phrasing, and this attempt
takes a wrong turn or two, but hopefully it gets there:

> "And so there was Bucky, having in this manner (just) saved the four--"

I think it would help to post a more powerfully emotive example, but I'm
having trouble finding one... >_>
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2011-10-27T14:32:50.023
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The question is well put. It is indeed a special case of how 連体修飾 (the
relative clause) is used in narrative.

Linguistically this is quite simple to derive:

ハッキーは４人を救出した 'Bucky saved four people' transformed into

４人を救出したハッキー 'Bucky, who saved four people'.

What is interesting is the use to which this particular structure is put.

４人を救出したハッキーであった... is literally 'Was Bucky, who saved four people...'.

But this doesn't make much sense. I think Hyperworm's rendition of this as 'So
there was Bucky, who saved four people' is a good one. It could also be
rendered 'So here we had Bucky, who saved four people'.

As a narrative style, this is not telling us that Bucky saved four people
(which we presumably know already). It is telling us something about the
situation -- here was Bucky, this guy who had saved four people. As Hyperworm
says, this little sentence is a prelude to further information, namely, that
this was actually a trap.

This is a device commonly used in certain types of Japanese narrative. To make
up a silly example (sorry, it's the first thing that popped into my head)
using the present tense rather than the past tense:

ブッサイクな女が大嫌いな次郎だが、この次郎はもうすぐ東京一の不細工な女性に出会うところだ。 Here we have Jiro who hates ugly
women, and he's about to meet the ugliest woman in Tokyo.

This is setting the scene rather dramatically for what is about to happen. Of
course we could say in Japanese as well as in English:

次郎はブッサイクな女が大嫌いだが、この次郎はもうすぐ東京一の不細工な女性に出会うところだ。 Jiro hates ugly women, but he's
about to meet the ugliest woman in Tokyo.

But this would lack the dramatic flourish that the use of 連体修飾 (relative
clause) provides.

Hope this clarifies what this structure is all about.
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