99668
I was reading 羅生門 by 芥川龍之介, and in the last part this sentence show up.

```

    下人は、饑死をするか盗人になるかに、迷わなかったばかりではない。
    
```

I don't quite understand the last verb + ばかり + ではない: the double negation in
Japanese means an affirmation (right?), but even with this I don't understand.

I think 羅生門 is quite popular, but for the sake of context, I post the whole
paragraph.

>
> 下人は、太刀を鞘におさめて、その太刀の柄を左の手でおさえながら、冷然として、この話を聞いていた。勿論、右の手では、赤く頬に膿を持った大きなにきびを気にしながら、聞いているのである。しかし、これを聞いている中に、下人の心には、ある勇気が生まれて来た。それは、さっき門の下で、この男には欠けていた勇気である。そうして、またさっきこの門の上へ上って、この老婆を捕えた時の勇気とは、全然、反対な方向に動こうとする勇気である。
> **下人は、饑死をするか盗人になるかに、迷わなかったばかりではない。**
> その時のこの男の心もちから云えば、饑死などと云う事は、ほとんど、考える事さえ出来ないほど、意識の外に追い出されていた。
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2023-05-17T21:13:21.063
99667
2023-05-20T01:49:15.743
2023-05-18T12:37:04.803
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56116
question
readings particle-ばかり
Understanding this passage in 羅生門 that uses ばかりではない
It's similar to the "not only ... but also ..." construction in English. (In
fact, it might have started as a translation of that.) It might look tricky
when the first part stands as a sentence, but usually the second part is
explicitly written in the next sentence, or otherwise implied somehow.

  * ばかり = only
  * ではない = not
  * ばかりではない = not only ...
  * なかったばかりではない = not only had [he] no ...

The gist of the last two sentences is:

> Not only did he have no hesitation [on the choice] between starving himself
> to death and robbing someone, but [furthermore] starving was entirely out of
> the question in his mind.

I combined the two because it seems to make more sense in English that way.
However, I don't think this difference is crucial. I think you can say
something similar in two sentences in English, too. You can replace ばかりではない
with ばかりでなく and combine the two sentences - the difference between the
construction before and after the change is minimal, and both are normal.

> the double negation in Japanese means an affirmation

In this case, the outer negation is applied to the "only" part and not to the
verb - it means "not only" = "there is more". So there is only one negation
applied to the verb (迷わなかった) and it is negative.
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2023-05-18T03:28:41.453
99668
2023-05-20T01:49:15.743
2023-05-20T01:49:15.743
10531
10531
99667
answer