き / けり: Recollective Past

Modern Japanese has one past tense, た, and beginners reasonably assume the classical language had a matching ancestor called き or けり. It did not — or rather, the story is stranger and more interesting than that. Classical Japanese carried two past auxiliaries, 過去（かこ）の助動詞（じょどうし）き and けり, and neither is where modern た comes from. た descends from a different word entirely, the perfective たり (covered on the つ / ぬ / たり / り page). That single fact is the key to this page: き and けり are a separate recollective past that faded out of everyday grammar and survives today only in poetic, wistful set phrases — which is exactly why 亡（な）き人 and ありし日 feel elevated rather than plainly "-ed."

き — the past you lived through

き marks a past event the speaker directly experienced or personally recollects. It is the tense of memory: "I saw," "we went," "it happened to me." It attaches to the 連用形（れんようけい, continuative form) of a verb, and its conjugation is irregular — most importantly, its 連体形（れんたいけい, attributive）is し and its 已然形（いぜんけい, realis）is しか, not the き you would expect.

Notice 見し in the second example: the verb 見る contributes its continuative 見, and the attributive し hangs a whole "past that I witnessed" onto the noun 夢. That 〜し-modifying-a-noun pattern is the one piece of き that lived on.

The living traces of き: ありし日, 若かりし頃, 過ぎし日

Here is where a "dead" classical form turns out to be quietly alive. The 連体形 し survives in a small family of noun-modifying phrases that educated speakers still write and say:

• ありし日（あ・りし・ひ） — "days that were," bygone days (あり + し)
• 過（す）ぎし日 — "days gone by" (過ぎ + し)
• 若（わか）かりし頃（ころ） — "when one was young" (若かり + し)
• 来（こ）し方（かた） — "the past, the road one has travelled"

These are not museum pieces. 若かりし頃の写真 ("a photo from my younger days") is ordinary in a memoir, a wedding speech, or a reflective conversation. But note the register: they carry a soft, retrospective, slightly literary glow that plain 若かった頃 does not. Choosing ありし日 over あった頃 is a stylistic decision, the way an English writer chooses "days of yore" over "back then."

A careful note on 亡き

You will constantly see 亡（な）き人 ("the deceased"), 亡き父, 亡き友 grouped with these poetic 〜し phrases, and they feel like the same recollective past. Be precise, though: 亡き is not the past auxiliary し. It is the 連体形 of the classical adjective 亡（な）し ("to be gone, no longer among us") — the same ク活用 attributive covered on the 〜き / 〜し adjective page. The reason it belongs in the same emotional neighborhood is that both are fossilized attributives that only survive in elevated, elegiac contexts. But grammatically 亡き人 is "a person who is gone," not "a person who past-ed."

けり — hearsay, legend, and sudden realization

けり attaches to the 連用形 too, but it means something き never does. It has two jobs:

1. 過去（伝聞・回想） — a past the speaker did not witness: legend, hearsay, "the past of stories." This is the けり that opens almost every classical tale.
2. 詠嘆（えいたん） — a burst of present realization about a state or fact: "ah — so it is!" "it turns out that…" This is the けり that closes countless 和歌（わか）and 俳句（はいく）.

The two meanings are one word because of its etymology: けり = き（past）+ あり（to be）. Literally "it was, and it still is [as I now notice]." That fossilized "still-is-ness" is precisely why けり can spin from plain past into a live, exclamatory realization.

けり as the voice of legend

The narrator wasn't there; けり frames the whole thing as inherited story. English reaches for "there once lived…," "it is told that…" — that hearsay flavor is the けり.

けり as the poet's gasp

In both, け(り) is not narrating a past event; it is the moment the poet realizes something and lets it land. なりにけり / 来にけり pair the perfective に (from ぬ) with 詠嘆 けり — "has become … and I now feel it," "has come … and I now notice." Translate these flat as "-ed" and you delete the entire emotional point.

This poem-closing けり is even fossilized into an everyday idiom: けりをつける ("to settle a matter, bring it to a close") is literally "to attach a けり" — to give something the finishing けり a poem gets.

Why き / けり feel poetic but た feels plain

Now the distinguishing insight competing guides blur. Learners are told modern た "is the past tense," full stop, and are left to assume it evolved from き or けり. It did not. Modern た is a worn-down form of the perfective たり. So Japanese effectively ran two past systems in parallel:

• The completion / perfective family (つ・ぬ・たり・り) → became た, the grammar everyone uses every day.
• The recollective past (き・けり) → never became everyday grammar and survives only as poetic 〜し-phrases and set metaphors.

That split is the answer to a question learners feel but can't name: why do 亡き and ありし and 若かりし頃 sound literary, while 死んだ and あった and 若かった頃 sound ordinary? Because the recollective past retreated into poetry, taking its elegiac tone with it. き and けり didn't leave the language — they left the everyday and kept the elevated.

Common mistakes

English speakers reach for ありし日 or 若かりし頃 thinking "past tense" and drop them into casual chat. They are stylistic, not neutral — reserve them for reflective, written, or formal registers.

Because た and き are separate systems, you cannot mix their endings. Pick one register and stay in it.

Key takeaways

• Classical Japanese had two pasts, and modern た descends from neither — た comes from the perfective たり.
• き = past you directly experienced/recall; its key survivals are the attributive し in ありし日, 過ぎし日, 若かりし頃, and 来（こ）し方.
• けり = hearsay/legendary past ("…ありけり") and 詠嘆, sudden realization ("…, I now feel"), the classic waka/haiku closer; its idiom けりをつける means "to settle."
• 亡（な）き is the adjective 亡し, not the past し — but it shares the same elegiac register, which is why they cluster together.
• These forms feel poetic precisely because the recollective past retreated into elevated language while the perfective family became the everyday た.