New answers tagged subsidiary-verbs
4
The usage you quoted is the past form of である (formal/literary version of だ), rather than of ある, so the question of animate vs. inanimate does not arise.
だ in fact derives from である, which is still used in literary or authoritative-sounding written speech (for the difference between である and だ, I would refer you to Tae Kim's website or Makino & Tsutsui, ...
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