わけ: What the わけ?

Introduction

Today, you'll meet 「わけ」, a point that tends to get glossed over in textbooks and classrooms, leaving learners confused when it continues to pop up like a grammatical groundhog.

Well, get your whacking hammer ready, because today you're going to learn alllll about わけ, whether you want to or not!

(... Or was it a mole?)

わけ: The ultimate explainer

構成こうせい

• 

  い-adjective/verb(という)わけ(だ)

• 

  な-adjective(な)/Nounわけ(だ)

  Example:
  → そういうわけで、魔法まほうのリンゴを返かえすことになった。
  "And so it was decided that we'd return the magical apple.”

訳わけ ("meaning; situation; circumstance") is one of the main "explainers" in Japanese, and is extremely common in casual speech, as well as in more formal, written contexts. Unfortunately, わけ can be a bit tricky to understand, mainly because there's nothing quite like it in English.