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気の合う人々のいる場を見つけたら、休まずに通うこと。
When you find a place with people that matches your interest...

To understand this sentence I tried changing it into

"(あなたは)気が合う人々がいる場"

And I think I seemed to understand the meaning of this part. Is my understanding correct?

Eddie Kal
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1 Answers1

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More context would be helpful, but going by what you have provided here, this reads like a piece of general advice given to an unspecified audience, in which case, yes, if you add a generic you, it'd make sense. The author is talking to the reader in such a way that they expect the reader to want to learn from them. You could say the tone is patronizing. And you are right this sentence does contain cascaded relative clauses. For more on relative clauses in Japanese, check out this answer.

ことfunctions as a nominalizer that marks a thing that is suggested to the reader/listener. See entry 10 on jisho.org. So your original sentence means

気の合う人々のいる場を見つけたら、休まずに通うこと。
If you find a place with a lot of like-minded people, go there without cease.

Eddie Kal
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    I hesitated to answer this question specifically because of the issue of generic you. Do you know (or does anyone know) can あなた work similar to the English generic you? My initial guess is no simply because it's not necessary to explicitly use pronouns or their work-arounds in Japanese. – A.Ellett Sep 01 '21 at 21:10
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    @A.Ellett That's a good point. I wouldn't say 二人称 work similar to the English generic you, because more often than not the subject is simply not there. But my limited understanding is in some contexts 二人称 can definitely be inserted, though that may make the sentence sound more like a command rather than a suggestion. – Eddie Kal Sep 01 '21 at 21:36