Ni Watatte, Ni Kakete and O Tsūjite: Talking About Spans in Japanese

Why kara made is not enough

Kara made is precise. It fixes the two ends of a period or a route and says nothing about what happened in between. That is exactly what you want for opening hours and train journeys. It is less useful when you want to say that something lasted an impressive stretch, that it crept gradually from one point to another, or that it went on without a break the whole way through.

Japanese has three tools for those meanings. Ni watatte takes a length or an area and says the action filled it. Kara ni kakete takes two rough points and says the action ran from one to the other with blurred edges. O tsūjite and o tōshite take a period and say the action continued right through it, or take a channel and say the action went via it. All of them feel more descriptive and more formal than kara made.

Ni watatte: over a whole span

Ni watatte comes from wataru, to cross over, and it says the action crossed the entire extent named before it. The word before it is a measured stretch: a number of years, hours or pages, a wide area, a number of occasions, or many fields. Sannen ni watatte, over three years; zenkoku ni watatte, across the whole country; sankai ni watatte, on three occasions; kōhan'i ni watatte, over a wide area.

There is a hint of scale in it. Native speakers use ni watatte when the span is long or wide enough to be worth noting, so gofun ni watatte, over five minutes, sounds odd unless five minutes is remarkable in context. Before a noun, the form becomes ni wataru: sannen ni wataru chōsa, a three-year survey. In formal writing you also see ni watari, the stem form, which does the same job as ni watatte mid-sentence.

Kara ni kakete: from around A to around B

Kakeru here means to span or to hang across, and A kara B ni kakete draws a soft arc from roughly A to roughly B. The edges are deliberately blurred: something starts around A, continues, and finishes around B, without a sharp switch at either end. That makes it the natural choice for weather moving across regions, seasons blending into each other, and trends that develop over a period.

The form works for both time and space. Kyūshū kara Kantō ni kakete, from Kyushu through to Kanto, follows a rain front across the map. Sangatsu matsu kara shigatsu hajime ni kakete tracks cherry blossoms. Compare kara made, which would make both sound like timetabled events with an exact start and stop. Ni kakete can also stand after a single point to mean towards: yūgata ni kakete, towards evening; nenmatsu ni kakete, in the run-up to the year end. Before a noun the form is ni kakete no.

O tsūjite and o tōshite: throughout and via

Tsūjiru and tōsu both mean to pass through, and o tsūjite and o tōshite carry two related meanings. With a period, they mean throughout, from beginning to end: ichinen o tsūjite, all year round; isshō o tōshite, throughout one's life. With a person, organisation or medium, they mean via or through: shiriai o tsūjite, through an acquaintance; intānetto o tōshite, over the internet.

The two are nearly interchangeable. O tsūjite feels a little more formal and written, and it is the one you see in reports and news. O tōshite is more spoken and slightly warmer, which makes it the natural choice when telling someone how you met a friend. For the throughout meaning, o tsūjite and o tōshite differ from ni watatte in emphasis: ni watatte points at the length of the span, while o tsūjite stresses that nothing changed within it.

The four span forms compared

The table puts the forms side by side with what they attach to and the picture each one draws. Reading down the third column is the fastest way to feel the difference between a fixed stretch, a whole extent, a blurred arc and a continuous throughput.

The last two rows are the everyday relatives. No aida simply locates something inside a period, and jū attached to a time word, as in ichinichijū or ichinenjū, means all day or all year in casual speech. When you would say all year round to a friend, ichinenjū is more natural than ichinen o tsūjite.

Register and where each form lives

All four span forms sit above everyday speech. They are the language of weather forecasts, news reports, company histories, academic writing and formal self-introductions. Among friends, speakers reach for kara made, no aida, zutto, all along, and jū. In a job interview or a presentation, the span forms make you sound organised and precise.

• Weather and news: kara ni kakete for fronts and periods, ni watatte for wide areas and long events
• Company profiles and CVs: ni watatte for years of experience, o tsūjite for how skills were gained
• Academic writing: ni wataru before nouns, o tsūjite for methods and channels
• Announcements: ni kakete for towards a time, ni watatte for works lasting a period
• Casual speech: kara made, no aida, zutto, ichinichijū and ichinenjū instead

When you use the formal forms, keep the verb formal too. Sannen ni watatte with a casual yatta sounds mismatched; pair it with okonaimashita, tsuzukemashita or torikunde kimashita.

Common mistakes with span expressions

The first mistake is putting a point where a length belongs. Ni watatte needs a span: sannen ni watatte is right, kyonen ni watatte is not. For a single year, use kyonen ichinen o tsūjite or kyonen wa. The second is using kara made where kakete is expected and making a gradual process sound like a timetable. Sakura wa sangatsu kara shigatsu made saku is understandable but flat; ni kakete gives the drift of the season.

Third, learners confuse o tsūjite, via, with de, by means of. De marks a tool or method: mēru de renraku suru, contact by email. O tsūjite marks a channel, usually a person or an organisation, that stands between you and the goal: hisho o tsūjite, via the secretary. Fourth, watch the noun-modifying forms. Ni watatte and ni kakete cannot sit directly before a noun; they become ni wataru and ni kakete no. Finally, do not stack the forms. Sannen ni watatte o tsūjite is doubled; pick one.