97942
I'm reading a book titled 君死にたもう流星群 and translated (on the book itself) as
_She Was Killed by Shooting Stars_ ; I'm trying to understand the structure of
the title, but I'm kinda stumped by たもう.

I [found](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/18945/what-
is-%E3%81%9F%E3%82%82%E3%81%86%E3%81%9F-in-%E7%A5%9E%E3%81%AE%E5%89%B5%E3%82%8A%E3%81%9F%E3%82%82%E3%81%86%E3%81%9F%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C)
that たもった can mean something like "to do with grace", and it's a classical
form equivalent to くださる; the same is said
[here](https://www.kanshudo.com/grammar/%E3%81%86%E3%81%9F).

Both of those sources speak about たもうた, though, and while I thought it can
simply be the past form of たもう and so means the same thing, I'm not sure how I
should read it in the title: the verb is 死ぬ, "to die", not something like "to
kill" (as the English title would suggest), so maybe "You died [with grace]
due to the shooting stars" or "The shooting stars that made you die [with
grace]"? But then, in 君死にたもう is 君 that dies, but since たもう is modifying 流星群 it
doesn't really seem to fit something like "You died due to shooting stars",
it'd would make more sense with something like 殺す (maybe 君殺したもう流星群, "The
shooting stars that killed you"?).

I tried looking also on my grammars, but I found nothing, so while I
understand that there is a person that died and shooting stars are somehow
involved, I can't put all of this together and understand the title.
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2023-01-03T18:10:41.710
97926
2023-01-04T03:06:47.470
35362
question
grammar classical-japanese
Meaning of verb stem + たもう
As pointed out in the comment section, this 君死にたもう is almost certainly from
君死にたもうこと勿れ, the title of [Yosano
Akiko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosano_Akiko)'s famous poem about the
cruelty of war ([English translation](http://marylin25.blog115.fc2.com/blog-
entry-730.html)). So one might imagine just by looking at the title that it is
about some tragic and unreasonable death.

たもう (給う in kanji; たまふ in classical kana orthography) in this context is a
classical-Japanese equivalent of なさる, not くださる. 死にたもう is お死にになる or 死になさる in
modern Japanese (although a dedicated honorific verb 亡くなる is the norm in
modern standard keigo). That is, this たもう makes the verb honorific, but does
not indicate the action is beneficial to the speaker or anyone.

So after removing the keigo, the title is simply 君が死ぬ流星群 in modern Japanese,
and this is an [**adverbial-head** realtive
clause](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/54677/5010) meaning "meteor
shower in/with which you die". Note that the subject of 死ぬ is not 流星群 but 君,
and the 流星群 is either the cause or the place of her death. Since English
prefers [物主構文](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/32449/5010), something
like "meteor shower that kills you" sounds more natural in English even though
the original title has no direct equivalent of "kill". That's why the title
ended up "She Was Killed by Shooting Stars" in English.

君(を)殺したもう流星群 is grammatical, but now 流星群 is the subject of the verb (殺す), so
this pays respect for the shooting stars. This phrase is nonsense unless this
novel is about worshiping the killer shooting stars.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-01-04T01:38:22.853
97942
2023-01-04T03:06:47.470
2023-01-04T03:06:47.470
5010
5010
97926
answer