Understanding the Japanese Particle に (ni): A Complete Guide for Beginners

Mastering the Japanese particle に (ni) is an important step on your journey to learn Japanese: it's used to mark destinations, points in time, and all sorts of stuff. Important stuff. So much stuff, frankly, that we felt it was worthwhile to dedicate an entire article to nothing but に (ni) and its various usages.

This article will cover (pretty much) all the usages of に (ni) alongside practical example sentences. We'l cover:

The basics of grammatical particles, in general

Before we can start talking about the grammatical particle に (ni), we should take a moment to make sure you're clear on what a grammatical particle is.

The best way I've found to explain this is to say that a grammatical particle is kind of like a postposition.

You know what prepositions are—they're little words that go in front of things:

And Japanese particles ("postpositions") are a lot like that, except for the fact that:

So, for example:

There are a lot of particles and they do a bunch of different things, but they all have the same goal: specify the grammatical function that a word (or phrase) is playing in a specific sentence.

The basics of に (ni), specifically

I'm not going to lie: it's a bit difficult to concisely explain the purpose of に (ni) because it does a ton of different things.

Like eleven things, to be exact.

Eleven.

(Perhaps even a few more.)

But what all those usages have in common is that they show some sort of direction:

1. Use に (ni) to mark destinations

The most basic usage of に (ni) is to indicate a destination—to say that you're going somewhere:

If you're the one moving something, you can also use に (ni) to show where you're moving it to:

Then, if you really want to split hairs:

2. Use に (ni) to show existence or presence

If you're talking about a location, you're usually going to mark that location with で (de) because the particle で (de) is used to show where an action takes place. However, if you're talking about the existence or presence of something, you'll use に (ni).

Sometimes, you'll be literally talking about existence:

But oftentimes you'll be talking about where something is, or is located:

Other times, you might use a variety of verbs which show that something has come into existence, such as to appear or emerge:

3. に (ni) to specify a point in time when something takes place

Use に (ni) in order to indicate when something takes place—whether it's a time, day, or event/holiday:

(No, really, that wasn't just an example sentence. In Japan, Christmas means KFC.)

4. Use に (ni) to indicate the recipient of an action

In another article, we talked about the particle を (wo), which indicates the direct object of a sentence—what you are doing an action to. The particle に (ni) complements を (wo) by showing who the intended recipient of that action is.

This enables you to take sentences like:

And give them a direction:

And here's a few more examples:

5. Use に (ni) to show the result of a change

When you want to say that one thing changes into another thing, you'll use に (ni) to indicate the of that change. In other words if something changes from state A to state B, then you'll use に (ni) to mark thing B.

6. Use に (ni) to indicate the cause of something

Use use に (ni) to indicate the cause of the sentence's main verb:

7. Use に (ni) to reference a standard

You'll use に (ni) for a variety of statements in which you want to raise something up as a standard against which another thing is compared:

Note that you don't need to use に (ni) if you're making a direct comparison between two things:

8. Use に (ni) to show the range within which a statement is valid

When you're making a statement that isn't universal, you can use に (ni)—usually には (niwa)—to show what that statement applies to.

For example, we can take these universal statements:

And then limit them to something more narrow in scope:

9. Use に (ni) when making ratios or talking about the frequency with which something occurs

When you make a ratio in Japanese, you use a specific structure:

This is, as you can see below, exactly the opposite of what we do in English.

10. Use に (ni) to mark the person who does the action of a passive sentence

In English, we have two types of grammatical voices: passive and active.

As you can see, the kicker and the kicked swap places in the passive sentence: the ball goes from the end of the sentence to the beginning of the sentence.

Something similar happens in Japanese:

As you can see, to turn an active sentence passive:

An entire post could be devoted to Japanese passive voice constructions alone... but, for now, simply remember that the person doing the action—the person eating the cake or kicking the ball—is marked with に (ni) in passive sentences.

11. Use に (ni) to show who was made/allowed to do something in causative sentences

The causative form of verbs is beyond the scope of this blog post, but to be very brief, causative sentences are sentences in which one person/thing causes another person/thing to do something. In causative sentences, use に (ni) to indicate which person is being made or allowed to do something. That's pretty straightforward.

What makes the Japanese causative form confusing is that they have only one form, but we have two in English: make and let. This can initially be difficult to wrap your mind around as make and let feel like very different things in English... but what matters is that, whether you have made or let someone do something, you are ultimately the reason they ended up doing that thing. You caused that.

Sometimes it's obvious that one party is making the other party do something that they don't really want to do:

But sometimes you'll need to lean on context to decide whether someone is being allowed to do something they want to do or forced to do something they don't want to do:

Here, it could really go both ways:

Without additional context, it's impossible to say for sure which interpretation is correct.

What's certain, though, is that the person being made/allowed to do something will be marked with the particle に (ni).

Do I really need to learn eleven usages of に (ni)?

Yes and no.

If you look at the example sentences I've picked, you'll notice something: the "different" usages of に (ni) all occur with quite different types of words and in quite different types of sentences. For example:

There were even a couple "usages" of に (ni) that I decided to skip, such as "to indicate the contents of a container", because they were super specific and literally only occurred with one or two specific verbs.

So, no—I don't think it's worth memorizing these usages one by one.

As you spend more time interacting with Japanese, and you see a wider variety of sentences that use に (ni) in a wider variety of ways, you'll gradually come to feel it—both how に (ni) works, and also the kinds of structures that it occurs in.

... But what if I really want to learn Japanese grammar?

Learning a language is actually a pretty straightforward process:

As you repeat that process, you'll gradually build the unique skill set that you need to do the things that you enjoy or find important.

The shocking failure of traditional approaches to teaching languages is that most learners never reach a point where they can kick off that effective learning loop.

So we built our own course.

You'll go back and forth between (a) concise, practical grammar lessons and (b) flashcards with sentences that reinforce those grammar points and introduce new vocabulary words. Below you can see how we cover the first usage of に (ni), for example

But this isn't just a slick looking course with a nice layout:

So you'll learn the key usages of に (ni) via a formal lesson, then reinforce it by seeing に (ni) used in practical sentences—then graduate from our course and begin seeing に (ni) used in real Japanese shows that you enjoy.

And if you're just starting out on your Japanese journey and aren't ready to think about grammar yet—we've got that covered, too.

Wrapping up

This page covers pretty much everything you might ever want to know about the particle に (ni), but if I were to pick the most important three to focus on:

Now go do something cool in Japanese 💪