受け身: Passive form... or is it?

Introduction

The passive form is one of the most volatile grammatical topics in the Japanese learning community. The textbooks tell you one thing, YouTube tells you another. Each source will claim that it knows the way to explain it and make it "easy". This has probably left many students wondering why after watching the clickbait video with "made easy" in the thumbnail, they still don't understand how to use the passive form, or even, what it is.

The truth is that the "passive form" in Japanese or, as I'll refer to it from now on, the 受身形うけみけい, is not easy. At least, not for native English speakers. Many learners could have been spared frustration and language learning "vacations" by having this written as a disclaimer before they even thought about dipping their toes in its grammatical waters.