You’re probably thinking, “What the hell the causative-passive?” All I mean by this are verb structures that combine both the causative and passive to form “to be made to do by” sentences.
Since we’ve already covered both the causative and the passive we only need to combine the two conjugations to create the causative-passive. Once in the causative forms ALL verbs can be treated as group 2 verbs and so to change them into the passive we need only replace the final る with られる.
| English | Group | Causative | Causative-Passive |
| to go | 1 | ||
| to swim | 1 | ||
| to eat | 2 | ||
| to leave | 2 | ||
| to do | 3 | させる | させられる |
| to come | 3 |
Grammatically, the final ending form (i.e. the passive) dictates the grammar and so the topic or subject is the agent of the action and the target particle is used to mean “by”.
| I was made to do my homework by my mother. |
Unlike the causative there is no ambiguity as to whether someone is making or letting you do something with this structure. As mentioned previously, the passive is often used in a negative sense which would imply “make” with the causative-passive structure.
Incidentally, this is the same as English. We wouldn’t say, “I was let to go home early by my boss”; we would simply say, “My boss let me go home early”.
| A thought-provoking novel. |
| To be concerned by your son’s attitude. |
| To be made to publicly apologise. |
| I was watching a film and was suddenly reminded of an old romance that I’d forgotten. |