I HAVE Formally Studied Japanese And Have Directly Experienced Some Of The Culture, And I Feel This Answer

I HAVE formally studied Japanese and have directly experienced some of the culture, and I feel this answer deserves an A+. :) If I may, I will add that Japanese pronouns are so complicated/fraught that most formal instruction that I’ve experienced discourages beginners from using them AT ALL. Which, as previously noted, happens a lot anyway. One thing that I’ve noticed is that in Japanese culture, oftentimes indirectness = politeness. The more direct you are (say, if you’re using specific pronouns and directly indicating the person you’re speaking to,) the stronger your language is and the more impolite it can be. This can lead to confusion for lots of Americans, as our culture tends to prize direct and forceful speaking...

Now I saw your post about honorifics, made me think of how Japanese language has a lot of "You" as well like kimi, temee, omae , kisama, anta and so on. But maybe it is because I am watching Naruto too much and didn't think some of them are actually rude to say them to Japanese people. I always thought "kimi" sounds really beautiful but it is apparently rude as well. I am sad. When I first learned English, I thought having only to say "you" to say is suck cuz it put everyone on the same level.

Japanese politeness registers are really complicated, and I am far from an expert. Basically I know enough to know how much I don’t know.

One thing that I think can be difficult for people from a (supposedly, but we won’t get into that) rankless society like the US or Australia is that the politeness of an utterance within a highly heirarchical society like Japan is not absolute but rather dependant on the relative rank of both the speaker and the listener.

In English speaking culture, “I’m so sorry sir, it won’t happen again” is deferential and polite and “oops, my bad” is casual and flippant and “watch it, I’m walking here” is rude. We can kind of see how the “oops, my bad” might be more or less appropriate depending on how bad the offence was and how close the speaker is to the wronged party, but English doesn’t really have a situation where a lower ranked person saying something to a similar ranked person is rude but to a higher ranked person it’s polite or so on to the way that Japanese might.

A great example because it comes up a lot is gomen ne vs gomen nasai vs sumimasen. Sumimasen can be as casual and rote as “oops, my bad” or “’scuse me” in some contexts and as humble and deferential as “I’m so sorry sir, it won’t happen again” in others. And “gomen nasai” can be as sincere and apologetic as “I’m really sorry, please forgive me” in some contexts and as whiny and inappropriately cutesy as “I’m so sowwy, pwease forgive me” in others.

So “omae” vs “anata” vs “kisama” and all these other choices of pronouns, it’s not as easy as saying “omae is rude.” “Omae” is rude when the speaker doesn’t have the right to address the other person that way. A boy refusing to use “omae” with another boy of the same age may be seen as prissy, fussy, etc. And “omae” is commonly used from husband to wife, and therefore from a male to a female lover generally… now this coincides with a lot of historically sexist stuff about Japanese marital relationships, but there’s no denying that there are plenty of people who sincerely find it romantic.

And Japanese gets more complicated than that because it’s not just pronouns but also how verbs are conjugated that modifies this politeness.

It’s also worth noting that since Japanese frequently drops pronouns altogether, even their use is often a deliberate stylistic choice!