One of the meanings of the noun
| Savings for school fees. |
Literally: “Savings for the purpose of school fees”.
| A plan for the future. |
Often the hiragana will be used instead of the kanji.
| Our company provides scholarships for foreign students. |
We can link it to a verb with に.
| Try hard for your family. |
ため can be added to the dictionary form of the verb with に to indicate that the preceding clause is “towards the purpose of” the following clause. This structure translates to English as “in order to”.
| Cook for yourself to save money. |
| Call the airport to check whether or not the flight will arrive as scheduled. |
| I studied like never before in order to get into my first-choice university. |
| In order to open up a bank account a personal seal is required. |
Note the use of the topic particle to make “for the purpose of opening a bank account” the topic of the sentence. Without it the topic of the sentence would default to you and a faithful translation might be.
| In order to open up a bank account you will require a personal seal. |
When used with the adverbial noun 必要 then ため is often omitted.
| In order to open up a bank account a personal seal is required. |
| Donate money to build a school. |
| Search for a part-time job for your graduation holiday. |
Used with the negative, past, past negative tense or with adjectives it becomes a more formal way of giving a reason for a current state. In this respect, it is close to “due to” in English. Very often the target particle is omitted in this case.
| The train was at a standstill for an hour due to an accident. |
| Due to the high probability of mobile phones being used during class they are collected at the start. |