Relative Clauses
verbs as noun modifiers
Drop any verb form (or じゃない / だった / じゃなかった) directly in front of a noun and it becomes a modifying clause — no "who/that/which" word needed. The clause keeps its own particles; only plain だ has to step aside.
A verb in any form can modify the noun that follows it
Drop a verb clause directly in front of a noun and it becomes a relative clause — no "who/that" word in between. 「たべる ひと」 = "the person who eats." 「たべた ひと」 = "the person who ate." 「たべない ひと」 = "the person who doesn't eat." 「たべなかった ひと」 = "the person who didn't eat."
The clause keeps its own particles
Anything that lives inside the clause — objects, locations, times — keeps its particles, just as in a full sentence. 「えいが を みた ひと」 = "the person who watched a movie." 「がっこう に いく がくせい」 = "the student who goes to school." Read the clause from its verb backwards to find what each noun is doing.
State-of-being forms also modify directly — except plain だ
「じゃない」, 「だった」, 「じゃなかった」 modify the next noun the same way verbs do. 「がくせい じゃない ひと」 = "the person who is not a student." 「せんせい だった ひと」 = "the person who was a teacher." Plain 「だ」 is the one exception: drop it (for a noun-noun link, use 「の」) or, with な-adjectives, use 「な」 from L3.
The outer sentence's verb still comes last
Embedding a clause doesn't change Japanese word order at the top level — the main verb still anchors the sentence at the end. 「えいが を みた ひと は がっこう に いった」 = "the person who watched the movie went to school." Inside the clause the order is free; particles, not position, tell you who does what.
There is no "who / that / which" word
Japanese doesn't borrow English's relative pronouns. The clause itself is the modifier, and the noun it lands on is the head. Translating literally feels backwards at first — 「ほん を よむ ひと」 reads in order as "book / object-of / read / person" but means "the person who reads a book."
Vocabulary in this lesson
About relative clauses in Japanese
Japanese builds relative clauses in a way that surprises English speakers: you simply place a verb clause directly in front of the noun it describes, with no "who," "that," or "which" in between. 「たべる ひと」 means "the person who eats." The clause keeps its own particles, so 「すし を たべる ひと」 is "the person who eats sushi." The state-of-being forms じゃない, だった, and じゃなかった modify a noun the same way — only plain だ has to step aside and become な or の. Because the main verb of the outer sentence still comes last, this is the structure that lets you finally build longer, natural sentences on top of your JLPT N5 grammar.
Frequently asked questions
How do relative clauses work in Japanese?
You put the modifying verb clause directly before the noun, with nothing in between: 「たべる ひと」 = "the person who eats." The clause itself is the modifier — Japanese has no separate relative-pronoun word.
Is there a word for "who," "that," or "which"?
No. Japanese does not use relative pronouns. Where English inserts "who/that/which," Japanese just places the clause in front of the noun, so the position does the work those words do in English.
Do particles stay inside the clause?
Yes. Everything inside the clause keeps its particles exactly as in a full sentence. 「すし を たべる ひと」 keeps the を on すし: "the person who eats sushi."
Can state-of-being forms modify a noun too?
The forms じゃない, だった, and じゃなかった modify a following noun just like verbs — 「がくせい じゃない ひと」 = "the person who is not a student." The one exception is plain だ, which becomes な or の before a noun.
Does embedding a clause change the word order?
No. Only the noun phrase grows; the outer sentence's main verb still comes last. The relative clause is tucked in front of its noun while the overall sentence keeps its normal structure.
Credit
These lessons follow the structure, sequence, and grammar-first approach of Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese. We are grateful to Tae Kim for making his guide freely available; the explanations here are our own retelling, and the interactive drills are original to this site.