Can an inanimate concept be the subject of 通報する? > > The school has notified the city health centre. I'm assuming this is the same as in , for example, and refers to the school as a collection of people. So a more literal translation would be "as a school, we have notified ...". Would it make sense to just say **** , or is it weird to have an inanimate object/concept doing the notifying?

/ is possible and means mostly the same. As to why not just say /, I think there are at least two things. 1) As you mentioned, /'school' is inanimate. It's not impossible to let an inanimate thing be the subject of an action (like ) , but there is a certain tendency to avoid that. 2) / will make it sound like an external observer is speaking, like a journalist, not 'we'='school'. Again, I think this is merely a tendency, though.

Here is a similar example from <

> 2020 ****

This is from a government website. If it was , it would sound _a bit_ more like someone other than the government is reporting it.

I don't think this is in the same category as . If you compare AB and AB, the latter can only be read as using as location. (In other words, the subject-like interpretation becomes impossible.) I think in a sense the in this question replaces a subject, but doesn't.