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N1
〜いかんともしがたい
Meaning
A stiff idiomatic expression meaning "nothing can be done about it." It conveys a strong sense of helplessness that one cannot handle or resolve it by one's own power. 「いかん（如何）」 is originally a word meaning "how / in what state," and with 「〜ともしがたい」 (there is no way to do it) attached, it came to mean "there is no way to do anything." It is used both as an attributive modifier, as in 「いかんともしがたい事情」, and at the end of a sentence. Used in writing or formal speech, it is almost never used in everyday conversation.
Examples
- 個人の努力だけではいかんともしがたい状況だ。 It's a situation that individual effort alone can do nothing about.
- 残念ながら、これ以上は私の力ではいかんともしがたい。 Regrettably, beyond this there is nothing I can do with my own power.
- 規則で決まっている以上、いかんともしがたい。 Since it's fixed by the rules, there's nothing to be done about it.
- 天災ばかりはいかんともしがたいものがある。 Natural disasters, in particular, are something one simply cannot do anything about.