Passive Form (〜られる): How the Japanese Passive Works

Building the passive form

The formation depends on the verb group, just like the potential form:

Every passive verb ends in 〜れる/〜られる, so it conjugates as a る-verb from there: past 〜られた / 〜れた, negative 〜られない / 〜れない, て-form 〜られて / 〜れて.

What the passive lets you say

The passive lets you make the receiver of an action the subject of the sentence, instead of the doer. In English we do this with "be + past participle" ("was read," "was eaten"). In Japanese you change the verb into its passive form and mark the doer — the person who actually did the action — with に.

There are two big uses. The first is the plain passive, used to describe facts or things done to a subject:

Whatever the sentence, the person who performed the action is marked with に:

The second use is the suffering (adversity) passive, where the grammar signals that the subject was inconvenienced or hurt by the action — even when English would not use a passive at all. Japanese can put the affected person in the subject position even when the action wasn't done to them directly. The thing acted on still takes を:

The conjugation traps

The う→わ point catches a lot of learners. For verbs ending in the kana う, the a-row form is わ, not あ: 言う → 言われる, 思う → 思われる, 買う → 買われる. Marking the doer is a second common slip — it takes に, never が or で: 母にしかられた ("I was scolded by my mother").

For る-verbs, the passive also looks identical to the potential: 食べられる can mean "is eaten (by someone)" or "can eat." Context decides:

• ケーキが弟に食べられた。→ passive: "The cake was eaten by the little brother."
• ヤッタンはケーキが食べられる。→ potential: "Yattan can eat cake."

The に doer and a を/が-marked object point to the passive; a が-marked thing-you-can-act-on points to the potential. (For う-verbs there's no overlap: passive 書かれる vs. potential 書ける look different.)

The passive in real sentences

The suffering passive shows its range in everyday complaints, where whatever belongs to the subject keeps を even as the subject takes the blow:

Notice the second example: 降る ("to fall/rain") has no object at all, yet the passive still works to show Yattan was the victim of the weather. That intransitive suffering passive simply doesn't exist in English — we have to add words like "got" or "ended up."

The short version

• る-verbs → られる; う-verbs → a-sound + れる; する→される, 来る→来られる.
• う-ending verbs use わ: 言う→言われる.
• The doer is marked with に.
• The suffering passive puts the affected person as subject to show they were bothered; the object still takes を.
• For る-verbs the passive and potential look the same — context disambiguates.

Practice it