JSLL #32 - Urashima Tarou - Thirty-sixth sentence

 This is the penultimate sentence of the story, and it's fairly long.

太郎がだまってその煙を見ていると、若者だった浦島太郎はたちまち白い髭と髪の老人になってしまいました。

たろうがだまってそのけむりをみていると、わかものだったうらしまたろうはたちまちしろいひげとかみのろうじんになってしまいました。

Tarou ga damatte sono kemuri wo miteiru to, wakamono datta Urashima Tarou ha tachimachi shiroi hige to kami no roujin ni natteshimaimashita.

The first part is a と-clause (when-clause) we've now seen multiple times. The subject is 太郎 (Tarou), marked by the particle が. Next are a te-form, だまって, from the verb だまる (normally written with a kanij: 黙る), "to be silent, to say nothing," and a complex verb phrase その煙を見ている "was seeing/watching that smoke." Note how the clause is in the non-past tense, and I translate it as past tense. We'll explain in a minute. For now, the clause reads: "When Tarou was silent and was watching that smoke,..." or even "When Tarou was watching that smoke in silence..."

Next is the main clause, which has the complex topic/subject 若者だった浦島太郎. This is a noun phrase (Urashima Tarou), modified by the phrase 若者だった. The first part 若者 is "youngster, young person," a word from the second sentence of the story. And だった is just the plan past tense of だ, "to be" (polite form です. Thus the subject is "Urashima Tarou who was a youngster."

Next is the adverb たちまち, which means "in an instant, immediately," etc. 

Next is another complex noun phrase: 白い髭と髪の老人. The main noun, at the back, is 老人 (old person, elderly person). Before that, connected by the particle の, are two very similar-looking kanji: 髭 (pronounced ひげ, hige) meaning "beard," and 髪 (pronounced かみ, kami) meaning "hair" --specifically hair on one's head. So the two similar-looking kanji have similar meanings too. 白い, you may remember, means "white." The entire noun phrase is "an old man with a white beard and hair." We see a lot of new kanji here:

• 老 is an N3 kanji which occurs in 28 common words, almost all related to old age.
• 髭 is a kanji that's not part of the roughly 2000 kanji taught in primary and secondary school, but it's still commonly found in writing. It occurs in exactly 1 common word, and that word is obviously 髭 (ひげ), "beard, mustache."
• 髪 is an N3 kanji that occurs in 9 common words, all related to hair (on the head).

Following this complex phrase is the particle に and a verb conjugation of なる, which together mean "to become." The verb なる is conjugated into なってしまいました, a polite past form of the てしまう verb ending, meaning that the thing described by the verb happened regrettably or unintentionally.

So the main clause translate to something like this:

"Urashima Tarou, who was a young man, sadly became an old person with a white beard and hair."

The entire sentence, then, is:

While he was silently watching that smoke, Urashima Tarou, who was a young man, sadly became an old person with a white beard and hair.