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There are also small details that you will learn the first time doing it wrong.

For example, when contacting with someone outside of the company, you would NEVER refer to anyone in the same company as you with -san honorific (Mr./Ms.) via email even in maximum formality mode, e.g. "I'll forward this to Tanaka-san, head of sales" may be considered rude. Instead, you will have to skip -san, as in "I'll forward this to Tanaka, head of sales."

These small details are so subtle and there's a lot of them. Many people don't really mind if you use it wrong, but some do, so you have to always be cautious with.



That's not a small detail, that's how basically everything about Japanese honorfics work... I.e. the uchi/soto is an important distinction.


Interesting rule. Do you know why that is? Is there some implied level of familiarity with coworkers?


IIRC from what my senior explained to me few years ago, this has to do with the inward and outward aspect of the Japanese business society and the Japanese language itself. The Japanese honorific is usually used from inward to the outward (e.g. to stranger, customer, partner, etc.)

I think the easiest way to think might be that you won't refer to your sister/brother with honorifics when talking about them with someone.

When you (an outsider) email a company, everyone in the company who replied to the email are considered belonging to the same group, so they should not use honorifics to refer to themselves regardless whether they are CEO or just random employee (even if you call them with honorifics in internal email.)

There's also another small rule regarding this, such as you can say something like "Uchida, the CEO" (CEOの内田) but NOT "CEO Uchida" (内田CEO) because the title in the latter is being used as a suffix, and considered a honorific (equivalent to -san). It's a weird rule.


Talking about your own “team” honorably (-san) is not humble. To be fair Japanese people have trouble with it all the time too; There are tons of results for on Google for phrase + polite or phrase + business




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