Breakdown of tsuma wa otto ni, bangohan no ato de sara o arau you ni tanomimashita.
Questions & Answers about tsuma wa otto ni, bangohan no ato de sara o arau you ni tanomimashita.
は marks the topic: what the sentence is "about." In this sentence, 妻 (the wife) is also the doer of the main action 頼みました ("asked"), so topic and subject happen to be the same. Using 妻は presents "the wife" as known information and then tells us what she did. You could also say 妻が夫に…頼みました, which puts more emphasis on who did it ("it was the wife who asked…") rather than just setting her as the topic.
夫に marks the husband as the person the action is directed to. With 頼む, the core patterns are:
- 人に 頼む – to ask someone (for a favor / to do something)
- ものを 頼む – to request / order something (e.g., food, a service)
Here, the wife is asking the husband to do something, so the husband is the indirect object and takes に: 夫に … 頼みました.
If you said 夫を頼みました, it would instead mean something like "relied on the husband" or "asked for the husband (as the requested thing)," which is different.
