〜たところで even if (futile): Meaning & Examples

How 〜たところで works

今から急いだところで、間に合わない is “Even if we hurry now, we won’t make it.” Attach it to the plain past. What separates it from ordinary 〜ても is the verdict built into it: the second clause is always negative or futile, so the pattern does not merely concede a condition, it dismisses it.

構文こうぶんConstruction

• Verb (plain past) + ところで

  謝ったところで、許してもらえないだろう。 — Even if I apologise, I doubt they’ll forgive me.

• The second clause is negative or pointless

  考えたところで、答えは出ない。 — Thinking about it won’t produce an answer.

• Often reinforced by いくら or どんなに

  いくら急いだところで、もう遅い。 — However much we rush, it’s already too late.

• With a quantity: “at the very most”

  待ったところで三十分だろう。 — Even at the outside it’ll only be thirty minutes.

例文れいぶんIn a sentence

注意点ちゅういてんNuances

• 急いだところで is about hurrying now or in future, not about having hurried.
• The second clause cannot be positive. ×謝ったところで許してくれる is not this pattern — for a neutral “even if”, use 〜ても.
• It is written and emphatic, and it always carries the speaker’s judgement that the effort would be wasted. That judgement is the point, not a side effect.
• With numbers it shifts meaning to “at most, and that is nothing to speak of”: 高いところで千円.

練習れんしゅうYour Turn

Tip

Name three efforts that would change nothing today, each with 〜たところで and a negative second clause. Then rewrite one with 〜ても and listen to the resignation disappear.

〜たところで (even if (futile)) in real sentences

Each one is quoted from a published Japanese text in this library and links to the story it came from. Some use older spellings, or break off where the sentence carried on. They are transcribed exactly as their authors wrote them.

Appears in 12 of 367 texts in our library.