Transitive + てある: Prepared State

English says "the door is open" and stops there — it has no way to add "…and someone opened it on purpose, for a reason." Japanese does exactly that with 他動詞 + てある. Where 自動詞 + ている reports a state as a bare fact with nobody behind it, 他動詞 + てある reports a state that a person deliberately produced and left standing — usually as preparation for something. 窓が開けてある isn't just "the window is open"; it's "someone opened the window (and left it that way) on purpose." That hidden agent and intention is the entire meaning of てある, and it's a nuance English simply cannot pack into "is open."

The construction

Take the transitive verb of a pair, put it in the て-form, and add ある. The thing that was acted on is promoted to the が slot, and the doer disappears from the sentence — present but unnamed.

Note the particle carefully: the affected thing takes が, not を. This surprises English speakers, because in "someone opened the door" the door is an object — but てある has promoted it to the subject of a state description, exactly as ている does. The doer is gone; what remains on stage is the object in its prepared condition.

The core contrast: ている vs てある

This is the pair to internalize. The same closed window can be described two ways, and the choice tells the listener why it's closed.

Both sentences point at an identical shut window. But 閉めてある quietly asserts a human decision behind it, while 閉まっている stays neutral about how it got that way. That difference — agentless fact versus someone prepared this — is the whole payoff of the transitivity split. When the two feel genuinely close, the choosing-perspective page weighs them side by side.

てある is the language of preparation

Because てある implies "someone did this ahead of time and left it ready," it's the go-to construction for describing things set up in advance — before guests arrive, before a trip, before a class. This is where you'll hear it most.

That last pattern — 〜と書いてある — is how you report what a sign, notice, or document says: the words were written by someone and remain there for you to read. It's extremely common and worth banking as a set phrase.

The hidden agent you can always feel

The single most useful mental image for てある is a room whose owner just stepped out. You walk in and see the window open, tea poured, a note on the desk — and you know a person arranged all of it, even though nobody is there. That felt-but-absent human is baked into every てある sentence, and it's exactly what ている lacks. This is why てある so often answers an unspoken "why?": 窓が開けてある invites the thought "…to air the room out," 冷やしてある invites "…so it's cold for later." Where English would need a whole extra clause ("someone left the window open on purpose"), Japanese compresses the intention into the choice of transitive verb plus てある. Learning to hear that implied intention is what separates a mechanical reading from a native one.

A wrinkle: the を "done-in-advance" variant

Honesty demands a footnote. Alongside the が state-pattern above, you'll also meet てある keeping を: 旅行のために切符を買ってある ("I've bought the tickets for the trip [in advance]"). This is real, natural Japanese — but it's a different focus. The を version foregrounds the completed preparatory act ("I've taken care of buying them"); the が version foregrounds the resulting state of the thing ("the tickets are in a bought state"). For the state description that parallels ている — the main job of this page — use が.

てある requires a transitive verb

One firm boundary: てある only attaches to transitive verbs. You cannot say ×開いてある (from intransitive 開く) — for the intransitive you must use ている (開いている). This is the flip side of ている, which pairs most naturally with intransitives. Get the transitivity wrong and the whole construction collapses.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• 他動詞 + てある = a state someone deliberately produced and left in place, usually as preparation; the affected thing takes が and the doer goes unnamed.
• The signature contrast: 窓が閉まっている (agentless fact) vs 窓が閉めてある (someone shut it on purpose).
• てある is the natural way to describe things set up in advance (置いてある, 入れてある, 予約してある) and to report what a sign or document 書いてある.
• てある needs a transitive verb — ×開いてある is impossible; use 開けてある or the intransitive ている.
• A を variant exists for "I've already taken care of it," but default to が for the state reading.